


spider in the snow

by snugglepup



Series: i felt free [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Abusive Parents, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, this was supposed to be pure fluff whoops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snugglepup/pseuds/snugglepup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Vriska Serket, and today promises to be the absolute worst day of your young life. Well, no, okay, not really, but it's going to be at least eight times shittier than yesterday, which was your sixteenth birthday that you spent half with your mom and half laying in bed tossing dice around because you don't have any friends here yet. Not that you're going to have friends here in the future, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. spider in the snow

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: the mostly-fluff tone and subject matter of this fic applies mainly to the first chapter. If you don't want a lot of unsettling and upsetting things to happen to either of these characters, then stop reading at the end of the first chapter and keep all of the happy untainted.

_you can’t say it but i know it’s in there_   
_you don’t know it but i know that you’re scared_   
_obvious and lonely, a spider in the snow_

_the dismemberment plan - spider in the snow_

 

* * *

 

**Nov 17, 2013, Somewhere in Michigan As the Snow Begins An Early Descent, Blanketing the Nameless City In Pale Reflected Light**

 

Your name is Vriska Serket, and today promises to be the absolute worst day of your young life. Well, no, okay, not really, but it's going to be at least eight times shittier than yesterday, which was your sixteenth birthday that you spent half with your mom and half laying in bed tossing dice around because you don't have any friends here yet. Not that you're going to have friends here in the future, either.

You had one of your weird recurring dreams again, the ones that feel way too real and stick with you. This was the one where you have wings and both your eyes and there's a boy whose own eyes have no pupils at all wearing weird blue pajamas and floating in black space that's speckled with strange lights and distant bubbles, and that one always leaves you disoriented and groggy when you wake up. So you sloooooooowly drag yourself out of bed, try and fail not to step on any of the pointy dice and things scattered all over the floor of your room, spend a moment looking at your favorite decoration: a drawing of a character you invented, you know, just in case you ever met anyone who might want to roleplay with you. You can't draw for shit but you could and did spend a few weeks' allowance commissioning somebody on deviantART to do it for you. It's perfect. She's perfect, a devilish pirate queen with a host of disposable underlings on a never-ending search for treasure and glory. She looks an awful lot like you, except her skin is gray instead of brown and she has these bitchin' horns. She's an alien, you decided. The raddest alien pirate queen to ever sail strange alien seas.

It's only when you hear Mom calling you downstairs that you realize you've spent way too much time thinking about this crap, not that you're exactly eager for the day to move along. You get dressed, jeans and your black t-shirt with your zodiac sign on it, and then cover as much of it as you can with a bland heavy coat to stand out as little as possible. You trudge downstairs and sit glumly at the table, where there's cereal and toast that you eat only begrudgingly.

"Is something wrong, dear?" Mom asks in a slightly sugary voice, knowing exactly what's wrong. You sigh for the eight thousandth time and get ready to try to explain for the eight millionth. "It's your first day of school, you ought to be excited!"

"Yeah, Mom," you say. "I'm soooooooo excited to meet a whole new slew of asshole students and asshole teachers. Where the fuck is my eyepatch?"

"Wherever you left it. You know if your room wasn't utterly disgusting, this would never be an issue," she replies crisply, patience instantly spent, and you groan. Maybe it makes you stand out like crazy but it's better than no eyepatch. When you're done eating you make your way back upstairs and root around until you find it lying by the side of your bed. You can hear Mom yelling that you're going to be late.

For a second you think, hey, maybe be optimistic for once. Maybe it'll be nicer here. Somehow. You feel a little bit better and then your foot comes down on an errant die. At least it's a reminder to put on your fucking shoes.

Stupid rotten fucking luck.

 

* * *

 

The dude's fist just clips the side of your cheek but still manages to hurt like hell. You throw a counter-punch and nail him in the stomach; he coughs and drops like a sack of bricks, but this only serves to invite his friends to join in. There's a circle of kids around, just watching them get ready to beat the shit out of you, some of them are yelling FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT and it's three on one and you're hoping for a lucky break. It doesn't look like you're going to get one, though, and in about fifteen seconds you're on your knees on the hard concrete spitting blood from a split lip. There's a flash of something in your head, something orange and overwhelming like a distant memory shoving itself right in your face and you're suddenly thinking fuck this, I'm Vriska fucking Serket and I am not going to get my ass kicked by a couple of white kids who don't fight fair, and then just as reality is about to come kick you in the shins and knock you to the ground the cold wind picks up in a gust of snowflakes that blinds your attackers long enough for you to punch one guy in the balls and laugh as he goes down, and then somebody's yelling loud enough to break through the ritual chants.

"Leave her alone!" His voice is nasal and instantly identifies him as a nerd even before he shoves his way by some other kids and he reveals himself to be scrawny and buck-toothed and dark-skinned and bespectacled. Nice work, kid, you think, now you can get put through the meat grinder too, except his timing turns out to be lucky after all because it makes one of the remaining two boys slow the kick he was directing right at your gut and stumble a little, so you leap up and tackle him to the ground and punch him in the face over and over until there's blood on your knuckles and pouring down the sides of his face and then his friend or somebody is hauling you off him and you're screaming bloody murder and you hope you broke his worthless fucking nose.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, and yet not at all to your surprise, by the time you've left the principal's office you're the one who's already suspended and they're the ones who got off with slaps on the wrist. You're sitting on a maddeningly nice chair near the office door, thinking. You have got zero interest in calling your mom, you're taking some time to yourself and nobody's gonna stop you, in fact fuck everyone, you're done done done done done done done done with this shit, done with school after school and city after city where the people are never different enough, and you're getting ready to stalk out of the whole fucking building and go find some place to go lie down and die in the snow when you see the kid from before doing some stalking himself, heading down the hallway and then positively banging his fist against the door. A minute later you can hear yelling and then he busts back outside looking pissed and sits down next to you.

"The fuck was that?" you ask after a minute or so of boiling silence.

"It's not fair!" he says, looking at the floor. "They were messing with you and you're the one who gets punished?"

"If you go to school with these guys, that can't really be a surprise, right?" Neither of you really has to elaborate on that statement. Got the wrong skin colors for this neighborhood, the both of you. He shrugs angrily and then does something nobody ever does, which is he looks you in the eye and then cuts loose with a goofy smile that almost makes you even more angry, but at the same time it's kind of impossible to be mad at this stupid little dork who must feel just as stranded as you, and something about his childish enthusiasm is weirdly endearing. Besides, he just got himself suspended yelling at the principal on your behalf. Nobody's ever done anything like THAT before.

"Wanna ditch school?" he asks, innocent face turning mischievous. "Actually, you have to because you got suspended and I have to because now I'm suspended too, so do you want to hang out or something?" He's still meeting your eye and you'd almost swear he doesn't think it's weird, and incredibly his gaze never lingers on the tied-off left sleeve of your coat. You can't even remember the last time you talked to someone other than Mom who didn't stare.

"Uh," you kind of mumble. "Yeah, I guess. I am so not calling my mom right now and telling her I got suspended for fucking dirty brawling on my first day of fuckin school." He kind of hops up out of his seat.

"So let's go! There's this spot I like to hang out at when I want to be alone, not that I'm ever not alone anyway, but that's not the point, the point is you should come with me." He looks at the door to the principal's office and then back at you and grins, buck teeth almost glinting with evil light. "We really don't want to be here in a few minutes anyway because that's when the stink bomb is going off!"

 

* * *

 

Tired from trudging through the snow, you finally arrive at a bridge on top of a hill. It's bitterly, bone-chillingly cold but you bundled up pretty well and for once you remembered to put on your mitten so it's not unbearable. The kid sits down on the bridge's railing overlooking a frozen river and kicks his legs back and forth. After a moment's thought you sit next to him, even though this is stupidly dangerous, or maybe because of that. You were thinking about killing yourself like half an hour ago anyway, so who gives a shit?

"Look up," he says, "I mean, if you want to!" You're fine with this so you look up to where the clouds are clearing up a bit and you can almost see the sky. Thin ribbons of blue and glittering orange-gold light are pouring through the holes in the stratus. It's definitely pretty, you'll give him that. When you look over he's still staring up in near-rapture. "Have you ever wanted to fly?" You're about to answer and then he continues. "Well, I feel like I'm supposed to be able to. Like it's something I had a long time ago but I lost it somehow. I guess that's pretty dumb, though!" For an instant you swear you feel the flutter of a fairy's wings from your back and then it's gone.

"That is pretty damn stupid," you say, even though you don't really think it's stupid at all. Like always, the words just come flowing out. "You're kind of an idiot, kid, you got yourself suspended for no reason. What, did you think the principal was gonna actually listen to you or something?" You're being really mean for no good reason but he just laughs it off.

"Not really," he says. "Nobody listens to me. But that wasn't the point! The point was, what would Nic Cage have done in that situation?" You sit next to him, swaying in the wind on this terrifyingly dangerous ledge, and find yourself completely dumbfounded.

"That," you say, "Is the shittiest reason to do something that I have ever heard," and it's not like you're lying but he's looking right at your face and you're blushing and thinking about your second favorite poster, the Con Air one with the kisses planted on it in the blue lipstick you forgot to put on today. "Nic Cage? Who gives a shit about him except stupid boys who pull dumbass stunts like plant stink bombs in the principal's office? You know he's gonna fuckin trace it back to you, anyway." He just smiles at you and you wonder if he's either reading you really deep or if he's just a dork. You're pretty sure it's the latter. You really hope it's the latter.

"I'm John," he says out of nowhere. "John Egbert." You're startled for some reason and then dumbfounded again. Egbert? What the fuck kind of a last name is Egbert? Was he just born to be a loser, an outcast? Not that you can talk, when it comes to the second part. You were born to be a loser and an outcast too, as far as you've been able to tell. John Egbert. What a name. There's something about both those names together, though, some kind of weird hum in your head that you banish immediately.

"Vriska," you say, wondering how weird he'll think your name is. "Vriska Serket." An odd look passes over his face; it's not the look of someone who's heard something weird, it's something else. Then he gets up, walks around behind you, sits by your right side and sticks out his hand to shake yours, as if it's not even weird to him that he had to relocate just to shake your hand. "What the hell was that, buck-teeth?" His smile falters a little but then he just shrugs. You immediately feel sort of guilty about what you just called him, but the feeling slips away, just like this kind of guilt always does.

"You shake somebody's hand when you get introduced!" he says cheerfully. Does this kid do everything cheerfully? "Or you hug them, sometimes, but you don't really look like the hugging type. Too bristly." You feel sort of sick to your stomach because he's already got you nailed. What the the hell is going on? Not that it's exactly hard to notice you're quote unquote bristly, but still.

"Yeah," you say. "That... makes sense." You sit and watch what may or may not be the last flecks of the day's snow fall over the city that's spread out in the distance below you, little dots of white floating like scraps of torn paper or colorless confetti over soulless suburbs and frozen streets.

"So where'd you come from?" John asks, and you're startled yet again, this time angrily before you realize that he's asking you out of genuine interest and not as part of some sort of taunt.

"I, uh... Seattle, last, but Mom got a job here and I got kicked out of school for giving this jerk internal bleeding so we relocated for like the eighth time. She insisted on getting a house in a NICE neighborhood, you know, big and stupid on a big fuckin hill, and I told her Mom you're moving us into a sea of white people, but she did it anyway. Seattle was bullshit, too, but I guess I was getting in less fights, so it must have been better than this shithole." Relocated, that's what Mom started calling it when you moved, maybe she thought it sounded less raw and depressing, but it really just made it worse just like it always does when she tries to sugarcoat something that really sucks. "The backstory is I guess Mom and Dad came over from India for whatever reason, I never got told much about it, and there you go."

"What's your family like?" he asks. There's some sort of odd glint in his eye; you can't figure him out. You almost feel like you know him from somewhere but he's not acting quite the way he should. Just a bit off, and it bothers you, but you don't know him at all, so that's stupid.

"What do you care?" But he just keeps looking you in the eye, waiting, so you answer. "It's just me and Mom. There was a wreck when I was eight... I guess Dad didn't make it, and I don't really have to fuckin tell you how I came out, do I." He nods. You weren't expecting pity, except you were kind of expecting it because that's how these things work, but then there isn't any pity at all. Apparently it's just part of your story to John. "Mom was fine. She was the lucky one." You sigh. "Fuckin lousy rotten luck," you mumble mostly to yourself.

"You don't belong on the ground either," John says. "You're the same as me. You've gotta just let go and fly. Those kids at school, all they are is specks if you get high enough above them, so you've gotta get your wings back, fly up as fast as you can, keep flying until you hit space, live on a meteor. See the universe. See a bunch of universes." At this point you're pretty certain that John Egbert is at least mildly insane. You should definitely keep your distance. You're only going to get hurt.

"You wanna come over to my house and watch a movie or something?" you blurt out.

He grins.

 

* * *

 

He pretends he doesn't notice your Con Air poster. He manages not to step on any of your dice. You actually end up watching Con Air because he says it's his favorite movie and it's secretly one of your favorite movies too. You keep feeling weird, like this should be a date or something, but you don't think it is. It's too comfortable for whatever a date is supposed to feel like. You feel like in a way you've been here before, in this situation, like maybe this is where you're supposed to be. Like maybe something in your life is going to be okay.

 

* * *

 

You have your other really bad recurring dream, the one where you're floating above a field of those bubbles but now you're close enough to see that they're full of weird chunks of terrain and houses and other things, and he's finally caught up to you and you barely see his huge green mouth open before your eyes are bursting with rainbow light and everything fades away to nothing and then you wake up. You have no idea what happened, a lot of the night's gone fuzzy, but John is watching Con Air again with the volume low and more importantly your head is in his lap. You bolt upright and your eyepatch catches on something and slips off. He looks you in both eyes, although you can only see him out of the one, and you know he's observing where your pupil and iris got cut into seven weird little slices, like a gruesome wheel. It's funny what shards of glass can do to a person.

"What happened," you say flatly. He shrugs.

"You just conked out and landed right on me," he says. "It seemed like it'd be rude to move you, so... I don't know. I rewound Con Air. I could watch that movie forever." You can't help but let out a sigh, not sure what you were worried about exactly but you're still relieved. Somehow and for some reason you find yourself flopping over and landing with your head in his lap again, facing the TV. Nobody ever told you somebody's lap could be this comfortable. It seems like you ought to get up, it's late and Mom might even be home already, but you're sleepy and things are hazy and quiet and you don't really want to. You take a moment and just sort of stay there, although if you're being honest with yourself, maybe you rub the back of your head against his stomach, long unkempt hair rubbing up against that dumb t-shirt with the ghost thing on it. He doesn't say anything.

"You should probably go home," you say, crushing down a lot more melancholy than you expected. "Mom must be home from work and when she sees me she's probably gonna ground me so hard my eye's gonna bleed."

"Yeah," John says. "My dad is not going to be happy. I'm gonna wake up to so many pastries." You have no idea how to interpret this statement so you just let it slide. Somewhat reluctantly, you lift your head out of his lap again and push yourself up until you're sitting, incredibly glad he sat on your right side again. You wouldn't be able to live with yourself asking some dorkass nerd for help getting up. Your whole head would just explode.

You escort John Egbert out of your house swiftly, before any parental disasters can take place, and once he's gone Mom is waiting and you lower your eye, feeling a hint of guilt, but she just hugs you.

"I'm so glad you're all right," she says, and she sounds like she might actually mean it, and maybe you're not grounded after all.

 

* * *

 

  
You're totally grounded, though.

 

* * *

 

  
The next time you come to school you're given a wide berth. It looks like all of a sudden nobody wants to fuck with the one-eyed, one-armed Indian girl who seemed like such a ripe target. You guess that's what beating the shit out of a few tough jocks and almost hospitalizing their big tough alpha male will do for you. Well, a bunch of jackasses snark at each other and some random people throw insults at you in the halls and there are hushed, gossipy whispers among the high school girl stereotypes, but nobody fucks with you directly and that's really all you care about. The rest isn't much of a surprise. You always stood out and the kids who stand out are the ones who end up ostracized and denigrated and alone, if not outright attacked just for the hell of it.

After your classes are over you see John kind of hanging out casually near the school gate, getting shoved once in a while by random passing larger guys but not seeming to care very much. When he sees you he runs right up to you grinning like a little kid, like being around you isn't gonna make him stand out any more than he already fuckin does, then skids to a halt in the snow. You take a moment to force yourself to remember John is the same age as you.

"Hey, Vriska!" he says, remembering how to say your name in a way that almost makes you feel kind of happy. "Are you still grounded? You should come over, Dad baked even more cakes and stuff, I'm losing my mind. You've gotta help me deal with this." It occurs to you that most likely you are never going to understand John Egbert or what the hell is going on in his head. You don't really care, though. It's not like anybody understands you, either.

 

* * *

 

The next thing you know the two of you've fought your way through a storm of various pies and cakes and unnamed experimental pastries and you're starting to get why John's dad's baking habits frustrate him so much, but it doesn't really take too long until you're in his room, which is totally plastered in posters of so many incredibly shitty movies that it almost takes your breath away. You pretend not to notice that he has the exact same Con Air poster as you, although of course his isn't garnished with your carefully pressed cerulean lip marks.

"Let's play Ghostbusters!" he exclaims. You acquiesce, unsure of the specifics or how exactly this is going to work, and then find yourself blindsided when he brings out an NES and blows into an old NES cartridge, trying to get it to run properly.

"THAT Ghostbusters? Are you serious, four-eyes?" Why does he still even have an NES that works? Why does he have this shitty game? Why do you remember playing it as a kid? Oh my god, you were such a nerd. Oh my god, who are you kidding, you're still such a nerd and you'd be gaming every day if it were possible.

"Deadly," he says, looking seriously into your eye. "Eight-eyes." There's something glinting in his own eyes as he says it. You're not totally sure what he means, maybe he's referring to your mutilated eye which is kind of odd and maybe rude, but something about it seems right to you and you let it slide.

"Whatever," you say, tossing your hair dramatically over your shoulder. "All right, Egbert. I'm down. But you better not think you're gonna out-game Vriska fuckin Serket." He giggles, actually giggles like a little kid, you haven't forgotten he's sixteen too but somehow he seems so much younger except for these eerie moments when he seems much, much older, and then the game finally fizzles into action. You had forgotten how magnificently shitty this game is. You wonder if everything Egbert likes is shitty. That would definitely explain why he wants to be friends with you.

It's kind of embarrassing the way you have trouble during the multiplayer segments because you can't hit all the buttons and you're pretty sure you should be feeling humiliated by how most of the time when you're the one with the controller you've got the D-pad and John has to hold the other side, the same way Mom did back when the two of you were close, when she wasn't made of brittle ice hidden under a silky facade. But you can't help but notice the way your hand brushes against his every so often, or how close together you're sitting in order to pull the whole thing off. You hadn't realized how much you missed playing video games. You hadn't realized how much you missed being close to another living, breathing person.

The two of you agree to take turns during the driving levels and then you frantically try to suck in ghosts together during the other parts. You run through the game a few times, but you can never make it to the top of the tower. That part always was always total bullshit, though. It's not the part that matters. All it really does is make the whole game about the journey instead of the destination, and you actually kind of like that.

As the game goes on, you try to figure out what it is you're feeling about this kid. He's just familiar, somehow, but then he's not exactly like anybody you've ever known, so what the hell. You like him, apparently, although you're having trouble categorizing the WAY you like him. It's not like you have a crush on him or anything stupid like that and yet for some reason you feel weirdly, absurdly close to him, especially for how short your friendship has been.

Eventually you're both kind of burned out on quote unquote 'classic' NES gaming. You set your controller down on the bed, wondering what you're going to do next, and then without any warning he lays his head on your shoulder. It's warm. You can feel his hair on your neck, all surprisingly soft strands on your skin, but mostly what you notice is the first thing, the warmth, a kind of warmth that threatens to spread through your veins to fight the winter chill that's still present even with the all the windows shut and the heating on.

"Is this okay?" he whispers, sounding like he thinks the moment is made of thin glass and might shatter any second now, which is probably accurate. You take a moment to decide. It feels nice. It feels really nice, actually. It feels like one of those moments you wish you could hold hostage to revisit in the flesh any time you feel like it. It feels rare and valuable and exotic.

"Yeah," you finally say after thinking about it. "Yeah, this is okay." He sighs in a contented way and you sort of nuzzle down against his scalp and something tense inside your chest loosens up, just a little bit. Just a bit.

 

* * *

 

Sitting on Egbert's favorite dangerous hang-out bridge again, you talk. You spend hours there on various days just talking. He tells you his story, which isn't very long; he never knew his mom, and his dad won't tell him the story 'until he's older,' which is awfully nebulous not to mention ominous. You're pretty sure there should be a law against parents pulling that stunt.

"You know what's funny?" he says, then answers his own question before you can say anything. "When I was younger I didn't know what my dad did for a living. And he has all those stupid clowns or harlequins or whatever all over the house, I thought he must have been an actor or a comedian or a weird puppeteer, I had no idea but it must have been something crazy. And then one day I sneaked into his office, finally, and he's just a businessman! He works in a cubicle. All that time I thought he was all of these crazy things and he just crunches numbers in an office building a few miles out of the suburbs."

"I think what's funny is that you're now officially holding the world record for dorkiness and you actually thought your cake-obsessed dad was somebody cool, you big idiot," you say, and he starts laughing hard like he always does when you're a jerk, except this time he slips a little bit in the snow on the railing and slides maybe eight inches and you think he might be going to fall and you panic and you try to grab him but you he's on the wrong side of you and your arm won't reach and a phantom limb isn't gonna do jack shit in this situation and if your only friend dies because you got in a car crash when you were a kid, because you met him and you poisoned his life the same way you poison everything you touch, you're gonna jump off this fuckin bridge after him. But then he steadies himself and scoots back and everything is okay except your heart is pummeling your ribs and your pupil is probably dilated like crazy and you moved over out of instinct so now your face is right by his.

"I think..." he says, sounding a bit lost, "I think this is the part where we're supposed to kiss."

"Yeah," you say, "definitely. But I don't really want to."

"Me either."

"What does that mean?" He shrugs. The two of you lean back away from each other, but it's not like a moment was lost; you feel as though you did have a moment, it just wasn't the kind of moment a movie script would have written for you. "Well, whatever. Just... Just don't sit on my left any more, okay? Sit where I can grab you next time you almost get your fuckin stupid sorry ass killed falling off a slippery bridge in the snow."

He just laughs and smiles. But then a minute later he does move, and you kind of look away so he doesn't see you smiling too.

 

* * *

 

 

You're both grounded after getting in another fight, this one because John bumped into some jock who said "Watch it, freak, nobody wants your kind around here anyway, so don't push your luck," and you dragged his name out of some witnesses and tracked him down and sucker-punched him in the face and body slammed him up against a locker and headbutted him so hard he passed out and kicked him in the stomach so many times they had to drag you off him. It seems like you're getting dragged off of people a lot these days. Incredibly, John manages to end up suspended for the second time this season even though all he does is try to defend you to the principal. You kind of think the principal maybe has some race issues he maybe should start fuckin working out. It's starting to feel like most of the people here probably have white pointed hoods hidden somewhere in the backs of their closets, because even you don't get as much shit as John does. You don't know how the fuck he grew up in this town without losing his mind.

It's late evening, Mom went to sleep early for some reason and you managed to sneak John in even though it's risky for both of you. So you're at your house again just kind of hanging out and attempting to marathon a few more Nick Cage movies. It's nice. It's really nice. This whole thing seems way too good to be true, somehow. You feel like there's a word for what's happening but you can't remember it, and it bugs you but you can deal because a whole lot of things in your life and your head bug you and you're pretty used to it now. You're sitting on the edge of your bed as Wicker Man ends, your stomach aching from laughter. John's dressed a little bit differently today, he's wearing blue jeans instead of grey and a solid blue t-shirt. There's something wrong here. There's something about seeing him in all that blue that sparks warning sirens all through your soul and the force of it leaves you wide-eyed and reeling...

Then something finally clicks that makes you leap back in shock and confusion and fear. It's him. He's the kid in the pajamas from the dreams you've been having your entire life. How could it possibly have taken you so long to notice? You try to yank the Flourite Octet from your sylladex in your confusion and panic but what the fuck is a Flourite Octet and what the fuck is a sylladex? What the fuck is happening to your head? You leap back and off the bed, a weird involuntary growl pushing its way through your vocal cords, and make a fist instead, making sure he sees it. He looks at you with calm eyes and kind of smiles sadly.

"Who the fuck are you?" you ask. "What are you? What do you want from me?"

"I had a friend," he says. "I had three friends. Their names were Dave and Rose and Jade. Except I didn't have three friends at all. I've never known anyone with those names. But I dream about them. I dream about the game." You're still not sure what in the flying fuuuuuuuuck is going on here but your heart is about to explode and you're more terrified than you've ever been in your life.

"Well that's great for you!" you say. "Glad you've got friends who are real but not real and you played a game with them or whatever! Except get out of my house please maybe, now, and don't come back and don't fuckin talk to me any more, how about that, because if I see you again I'm gonna punch your fuckin buck teeth out and kick you in the balls and throw you out in the snow and hope you DIE!" You almost scream that last word, but something about it catches in your throat and comes out as more of a rough loud whisper. There are faces swimming around in your head and you don't get it and you're scared and confused and you didn't ask for any of this.

"I'll go," he says, and he has a wistful, worried look on his face. As he opens the door to your room he turns around and says a few words, names maybe. "Karkat Vantas. Tavros Nitram. Kanaya Maryam. Aradia Megido." He looks down for a moment like he's giving you bad news, says "Terezi Pyrope," and then he leaves, shutting the door quietly behind him. You pick up a handful of dice and hurl them at the wall. You fall back onto your bed, eye wide open, staring at the ceiling. You want to scream. You don't scream.

 

* * *

 

You've been to his place enough times and you remember the address. It's late enough that he should be asleep and you don't want to knock, so you stand by the Slimer bouncy ride that you remember from somewhere other than just the times you've seen it here, the tree with the tire swing you remember standing next to once as you looked up with a broken heart through this same window even if that memory is more like the ghost of an echo, and you toss a few little pebbles up at his window until he looks down and meets your sad, pleading eye. He disappears and a couple of minutes later he's quietly sneaked outside.

"It's coming back," you say, and he nods. Of course he knows what you're talking about. He knew. He knew the whole time, for some unfathomable reason. "All of it. Karkat, he was always yelling. Suuuuuuuuch a little prick."

"I liked him!" John says. "He was fun to talk to." Of course JOHN EGBERT would think that. John Egbert would think it was fun to talk to a pumpkin.

"And Kanaya," you say. "She loved me and I didn't even fucking notice, but it's so obvious now. And, and Tavros. He didn't deserve any of it. He didn't deserve what I did to him, not even one thing." John doesn't say anything, just watches you, waits. "Aradia, I just, I just killed her too, in like the meanest way possible. And..." You don't even want to say it. "Terezi."

"Yeah," he says. "I learned about all of it in the dreambubbles, back when we were dating, or matesprits or whatever. But you were different back then." He's right. You were different. You were a hero, a liar, a traitor, a murderer, you hated everything and everyone but nobody as much as yourself. Well, at least that last part hasn't changed.

"She killed me," you say, and he nods. "And I deserved it. She did the right thing."

"You know it wasn't about whether you deserved it or not, not for her. She did the only thing she could," John says. But there's still so much you don't understand, so much that doesn't make sense.

"But he found us," you say. "He killed you first. Lord English. That persistent piece of shit. And eventually he must have caught me and he killed me too. So why am I alive right now? Why are you? Oh my god, we were MATESPRITS. You were my, my, my boyfriend I guess. I guess that's the word here, isn't it."

"Yeah, he did." It's all coming back now, he's unlocked a flood of memories, another life that's pouring into your head from inside of your head and making you feel like at least one and a half people stuffed into the same body and mind, if not more. The part of you with horns is saying he's hurting you and if you don't ruin him as soon as possible he's going to win, win what exactly you're not sure but you have to be the one who wins, there's no other choice because losing is the same as dying. The side with brown skin and sixteen years of soft human upbringing says that you were sick and vicious and just thinking about that other life and who you chose to be in it makes you want to puke and then go back to John's bridge and jump off after all. "And uh, yeah, haha, that is the word here."

"Then we double died, so... so why do we exist?" John shrugs, but then he gets a twinkling look in his eye. Now that's he's on his second run through this planet he's always getting these annoying twinkling looks.

"I've got this theory I've been thinking about for the last couple years," he says. "We all thought of the dreambubbles like they were the afterlife. But they weren't, really, remember? They were a space for ghosts that that one troll girl, uh, Feferi something, she got the Horrorterrors to 'glub' them for everyone, probably because they knew it would give us a better shot at taking down that green dude. So if they were never meant to exist, then maybe this is the real afterlife, the place we're actually supposed to go when we die? Like a kind of reincarnation into a new world, or a world that's similar, or something like that. Maybe I've just spent too much time thinking about it, but it makes sense to me. I don't think the game even exists here, for one thing. I mean, I hope it doesn't. But I don't see how this world could support something like that. We don't even have sylladexes here."

"But I was so horrible," you say, and you're about to cry except you never cry. Vriska fucking Serket doesn't cry, not even now. "I, I hurt everyone so much. All I cared about was trying to feel important. I made Tavros's life a living hell. I KILLED him, John, I murdered him, even if it wasn't supposed to be a big deal in troll culture or whatever. And Terezi... the things we did to each other..."

"But that's over," John says. "And that's not who you are now. I don't know why, but we've got a second chance here. A chance to be different people or maybe better people or who knows what. It's a whole new world, even though it's the same old world. Well, I mean, it's more or less the same world as my old one, and I'm still trying to get a solid idea of why you're here and why you're human now."

"But it's just us," you say. "We're alone here." You still want to cry. You still won't cry.

"I don't think that's true. I don't think time is the same here, and I think if we looked hard enough and long enough, we could find everybody. Things could be different. I could go to Texas and track down every Dave Strider until I found the right one. You could go find Tavros and tell him you're sorry and this time you'll mean it. He'll probably even forgive you."

"That's too good to be true," you say, but John shakes his head.

"Why should it be? We played the game, you guys won, and my session might as well have been a success after all the shit it threw at us, we went above and beyond the call of duty for all this crap, we gave paradox space everything we had to give and more. I think we've earned a chance at a new life. A real life, one that doesn't just end along with the whole world when you're thirteen years old." He steps forward hesitantly and opens his arms and you step forward too and wrap your arm around him and lean into the hug, and there definitely aren't any tears in your eyes because Vriska Serket does not fuckin cry.

"So what are we now? I think I still love you, sort of, but..."

"Yeah," he says. "Me too, but I think that romance is shot. So... maybe something else." It's too good to hope for but god damn it you love this huge nerd who's gotten a little bit weird in this new world, who's got an old soul and doesn't talk exactly the same way as he used to but who's still spiritually the same John Egbert you always knew.

"I think I'm pale for you," you say, furious at yourself for blushing along with the words, and he laughs, a really dorky cute laugh that sets off this dizzy swooping sensation in your head and your stomach and makes your cheeks even redder.

"Yeah," he says. "Whatever that one meant. Best friends, I guess. Except sort of more." You nod into his shoulder and he squeezes you tighter before letting go. You stand there for a moment and then slowly raise your arm, spreading two fingers wide. He seems confused for a second and then he giggles nervously and mirrors the gesture, letting your fingertips press firmly, half a diamond on each hand making up one whole.

"I have to go home," you say. "It's late. Mom'll kill me if she finds out I'm out this late." Well, she'll ground you at least, but actually you're already grounded so all she can do is, what, ground you harder? Your last Mom probably would have eaten you alive if you came home late and without food, but this one actually cares about you sometimes, even if she is cold and unpredictable. This one loves you, even though she'll never bother trying to understand you, even though you're a horrible mess of a troll. A human, you mean.

"Yeah," John says. "If Dad finds out I'm out of bed he'll bake me like, so many cakes. He's the worst dad ever." You laugh into your mitten to muffle the sound. Once again, the snow's begun to fall. In the morning Mom'll shovel the driveway and you'll feel a bit guilty that you can't help very much, but you're used to that. You can handle that.

"I'll see you at school," you say. "When we're not suspended any more." He nods.

"Bye, Vriska!" he says cheerfully before sneaking back into his house. You start walking home, and then, even though it's risky in the snow, you start to run, because there's a certain chat client you need to download, a whole internet to search, and most importantly, there are friends to find and meet all over again.


	2. bad habit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR WARNING FOR GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF SELF-HARM. Seriously. If that bothers you, be careful with this one. If that really bothers you, consider not reading.

_and you might say it's self-indulgent_   
_and you might say it's self-destructive_   
_but you see it's more productive_   
_than if i were to be happy_

_the dresden dolls - bad habit_

 

* * *

 

 

**Vriska: Give in.**

 

You can't stop thinking no matter how hard you try and you really, really need to stop thinking. Right now it's 8 PM on a Sunday night and you're sitting on the edge of your bed rocking back and forth, muttering to yourself, clamping your jaw down on your forearm and holding your teeth in until the flesh is almost numb and then moving on to another spot, extending a trail of rapidly bruising marks that leads down from as high as you could get a good grip with your teeth by another couple of inches.

The pressure and pain are something but tonight they're not enough, they were just barely enough along with the easy vice of nicotine and tar for almost a year but this week, this is too much, this is way more than you know how to handle and ever since you left Seattle behind Mom's been kind of perceptive and you're worried about smelling like smoke so you don't even get that. You choke down a bitter, slightly hysterical laugh because it's only been a few days since you landed a moirail who makes your soul sing and now all you can think about is how good your blood looks when it's on its way out of your body. Ever since you got home after, wait no, you're not even gonna think about it, ever since you got home and confined yourself in your room you've been steadily losing control. It started out with pacing back and forth and chewing on your lip and letting the dice on the floor push up into your bare feet and grinding down a little bit, and then a short-lived attempt at some improvised breathing exercises, and now you're doing the biting thing but you can't help but notice you've got maybe two left before you're out of unmarked space.

You force yourself to lie down and catch your metaphorical breath. You can beat this. It doesn't matter if the inside of your head is all hurricanes and broken glass and devastating swirls of burgundy and brown. Everything is starting to get shaky around the edges and you keep thinking you see thick cerulean soaking your clothes and pooling on the bedspread. You curl up with your fingers gouging at your scalp through your hair, feeling for protrusions that aren't there, trying to tell yourself you're not her any more, you've never really been her, exactly, and you've almost convinced yourself when the memory of watching a fleet of ships coming apart as hundreds of enslaved white-eyed sacrifices dissolve into nothing under sweeps of annihilating light floats up to the front of your consciousness. You sit up. The clock on your wall says it's 10:00 and you have absolutely no idea how that much time could have just passed but apparently it did; now that you think about it your scalp is burning and scabby from the rake of your nails and your muscles ache from tension and holding one pose too hard for too long.

The next thing you know you're standing in the bathroom, the last two bites that were supposed to be your ultimate line of defense left unbitten. A switch has flipped somewhere and you can't for the life of you think why you even felt conflicted about this. There are two girls behind you in the mirror but they're both younger than you, years younger, and one of them is burned to the bone in places beneath her ruined blackened dress and the other one is staring blankly up into the sky while melted jelly runs down her cheeks. You root around under the sink and pull out the box that originally held an electric razor from back when you were sort of vaguely trying to bother with keeping your legs shaved but now hides some things that are a lot less safe. The feeling of a thin wedge of metal between your forefinger and thumb is electric. Who were you kidding acting like you were over all this when one of the first things you did after moving here was hide a bunch of razors in your fucking bathroom? When you look back up at your face in the mirror the whole thing seems hazy for some reason, almost like it's steamed up from a hot shower, so following a prompt in your mind that comes out of nowhere you slowly remove your eyepatch.

You can't see out of your left eye, of course, that doesn't make any sense, but those seven slivers of iris and pupil seem like they change your perception and the mirror's cleared up again and you see yourself with a lance shoved deep through your chest and a gush of blue pouring from its entry point. You giggle and sway dizzily and look down at your real chest and there's nothing, and then you look back to the mirror and your reflection is sprawled on the floor in a pool of her own blood, and someone else, someone who was always eight thousand times stronger than you would have admitted, eight million times stronger than you, that person whose name is like painful heart palpitations and rising bile, he's wiping the blood off of his lance and as he turns his face toward you your head swings down because you can't, you can't do this, you can't stand the idea of seeing his face again, and you think of Aradia and you wish you could take a step back through realities and trade aspects with her or something and rewind time and let the boy's big moment go the way it should have, the way a fair universe would have let it go, you wish it really had been you with your bonecage splintered and your bloodpusher ripped to shreds and a hole punched through your back and a slow fade to oblivion falling down that shaft to lie broken against cold metal, eyes going empty to the stern chime of a clock that has been waiting a long time to strike Just.

You shut the bathroom door and lock it and there's a clarity to your actions that you had almost forgotten you could possess and you unzip your jeans and pull them off and sit on the edge of the bathtub and you grasp a razor tight between your thumb and the side of your index finger and you lower it slowly and shakily toward skin that's long since been striped with scars.

 

**John: Answer.**

 

You're half-asleep and half-dreaming, remembering sailing above Skaia's clouds, of being one with the wind and sky, constantly pestered by friends and strangers. Of meaning something to the world you live in, of being more than just another speck in an endless sea of specks. And then you're kind of melancholy and you wake up a bit and roll over and stare at the open laptop by the side of your bed. You finally got the courage to download Pesterchum but you're still anxious, you still haven't added anybody's handles except for Vriska's, you're too scared that nobody else will be there, that she was right when she said it was just the two of you and for some reason there won't be a Dave or Rose or Jade or Karkat to track down after all. So you're gazing at nothing and wrestling with yourself when Nic Cage's voice explodes from the phone that's sitting on the same desk, screaming inquiries into precisely how an object came into significant contact with fire. You kind of light up because the only reason you even used to have a cell phone was because Dad wanted to make sure you wouldn't ever get lost or something and he wouldn't be calling your phone at 11 PM which means that maybe Vriska wants to hang out or something and really, like, who cares about sleep anyway? The phone is at your ear and the call active before Mr. Cage has a chance to repeat his diatribe.

"Hello?" You kind of groan into the receiver. Apparently you aren't as awake as you thought. There's silence on the line for five or six seconds; you almost wonder if it was just an accident or something.

"Heyyyyyyyy," Vriska says. Her voice is weak and quavering. "I got a, I got a favor, to..." she trails off and doesn't pick the sentence back up. You can hear a faucet running and some rustling around, though. After the game and who knows how long in the bubbles and the green dude and then another sixteen years on this Earth, you've gotten good at sensing when something's wrong, and this is giving you a bad vibe real fast.

"What's up?" you ask. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm... fuck!" A collision and then a thump. "I just, I was gonna ask, do you have any, like, bandages? Not like band-aids, like the wrap around stuff kind?" Well, if you weren't worried before you're sure as fuck worried now.

"We've got some in the hall closet, I think. Vriska, what's going on? Did you get hurt or something?"

"I'm fine, it's fine," she mumbles. "Just need some bandages, you know what I mean?" She lets out a weird high tremulous laugh as if she just said something funny. "Ahhhhhhhh, fuck, that's not, that's not great, whoo boy."

"I'm coming over," you say. She giggles again and more loud rustling pushes static through your shitty speakers, she didn't seem to hear you at all. "I'm coming over," you say again, more loudly this time.

"Oh," she says, like it hadn't occurred to her that you'd have to actually leave your house and enter hers in order to deliver an item. "No, no don't come over, never mind, it's not a big deal. I was just, I needed something for... a... uh, school project."

"We're in the same grade," you say, "and you talk to me basically every day. If you had a project I would've known about it already. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"John, wait--" but you snap your cell shut and get dressed and sneak the roll of bandages out of the closet and manage not to trip any of the squeaky parts of the stairs on your way out. When you get to the street, you start to run.

 

**Vriska: Handle the situation.**

 

You have no idea what to do at this point, you fucked up royally with that phone call, you fucked up royally in general. There's an ache in your lower back so you adjust it against the outer rim of the bathtub and try to get more comfortable on the little rug that Mom's been putting in bathrooms since you were in middle school. You can't find anything to rest your head on so you sacrifice the comfort of your upper back instead and just let your head hang backward so you're staring at the ceiling, or would be if your eyes weren't closed. After roughly ten seconds of peace your phone starts blaring Tegan and Sara and you wake up some and get it open before the noise wakes up Mom or something. You're not sure why John would be calling back this fast, he barely hung up on you, didn't he?

"Hello, you've reached the voicemail system for the World's Biggest Bitch. She's not here right now, so leave a message after the beep. Beeeeeeeep."

"Vriska, I'm in your room," he says. "The bathroom door's locked and also I can hear you on the other side, I know you're in there. I've got bandages, let me in or I start banging until you unlock it or your mom wakes up."

"Noooooooo, no, I'll just crack the door, maybe you can just shove them through, you cannot fucking come in here, okay?" He can't, he really can't, he cannot see you like this, nobody can see you like this ever again especially not him anybody but him, you'd almost rather Mom find you and put you through a familiar nightmare all over again than let John into the room at this moment. You can't believe he managed to get up here without waking up your mom and triggering something apocalyptic. You can't believe you were stupid enough to fucking call him. You can't believe yourself in general.

 

**John: Deceive your moirail.**

 

"Okay, I'll put the roll through the door," you lie with a shred of guilt, and brace yourself for action. There's more shuffling and thumping and a click as the door unlocks. It slowly creaks open wide enough to stick something through it so you shove your foot in so she can't close it again and pull on the handle. The door swings open just enough for you to see something red before she catches on and starts hauling back, trying to close it again, but you've propped it open now.

"Fuck you!" she says, "I said not to fucking..." she grunts with exertion; you actually didn't think this was going to work because she's so much stronger than you are, but it seems like she's a lot weaker than normal. "Wait, just, fine, okay, fuck, one second," and she sounds embarrassed, "I'm in my underwear, sorry, is that weird?" You just pull the door open and you can hear her shuffling away before you actually see her. Once you do see her you almost wish you hadn't.

"Oh my god," you say basically involuntarily. She's lying down with her head kind of propped diagonally against the rim of the bathtub, arm held tight across her chest. She is indeed in her underwear, plain black boyshorts and an oversized black t-shirt. There are smears of crimson on the floor and bloody fingerprints all over the place left by her hand, which is sticky with vital fluid. The source of it all seems to be her left thigh, which from where you're standing is kind of just a mess of red running in streams down to the slippery tiles.

"It's fine," she says, "don't sweat it, it's no big deal," and you step in and close the door behind you and get down on your knees in front of the total wreck of a Serket that you're used to seeing tough and alert and indestructible, and she opens both her eyes sort of halfway and sees that you've seen and says "Okay, so maybe I fucked up just a little bit."

 

**Vriska: Give in to something different.**

 

You shut your eyes again as though if you can't see him he won't be able to see you. All sorts of weird things are playing inside that curtain of darkness, swirls of colorful light and pictures like little shreds of memory that are trying to gel together. An image starts to form as everything else gets quieter and dimmer, a face you haven't seen in so long.

"Hey, Fussyfangs," you mumble. "Where'd you come from, been fuckin forever," and then hands are shaking your shoulders and your eye drags itself back open to reveal John Egbert getting your blood all over his jeans.

"Wake up," he says, "Vriska, stay with me, alright? I'm calling 911." He reaches for his pocket, presumably to get out his phone, but you grab his wrist and struggle to keep it from moving. This is so stupid, you can't believe you're slowly losing a game of arm strength against John Egbert of all people.

"Don't, please don't, they'll keep me for who knows how fuckin long, don't call," and he looks horribly conflicted. "I can't do that again, John, and nobody understands, I don't, I don't want anybody's pity, I don't want Mom to tell me all the shit I already know about how pathetic this is, I don't wanna..." you squeeze his wrist a little bit tighter, which is pretty much all you can muster at this point.

"Let me look, then," he says, and you just nod. He soaks a paper towel and wipes most of the blood off your left thigh, exposing eight long slashes. "Oh, man." You hunch your shoulders together against the sting. "Oh, crap. Uh, this might hurt a little bit, sorry," and you can feel him pulling the skin on either side of the parallel wounds and you let out a pathetic whimper that is an absolute embarrassment that he'd better not have heard.

"What the fuck," you say, watching more blood well up and trickle down.

"Sorry," he says, "I had to see how deep they went. Vriska, this is kind of bad, I'm serious, you need to go the hospital, two of these are a lot worse than the others and they are not gonna stop bleeding on their own, you definitely need stitches." You knew that much already, even if you were kind of hoping you were wrong.

"Not goin to the hospital," you say. All that red is so pretty and weird. It's the wrong color but it's the right color but it's the wrong color but it's the right color but it's --

"Vriska!" John's got you by the shoulders again. "You're like, passing out, how long have you been lying here like this?" You try to focus and think of the answer. It's harder than it should be.

"Hour," you say, "like maybe an hour, I don't fuckin know, however long it's been since 10, there's no clock in here." Clock, the clock, you'd forgotten about the clock, you wonder if it's swinging right now, you wonder how many just deaths it would take for your karma to even out. "John, the clock," you're trying to express something super important but it's really hard to figure out what words will make it come together, "It was Just, I saw it for a second when I died on the meteor, it was Just."

"I know it was, that isn't important." But it's so important, it's the most important thing and he doesn't get it, he never got it, alpha John figured it all out when you met him again in his dreams but this one still doesn't hate you and you have to fix that, at this moment nothing else matters.

"Killed them," you say, "Killed my friends, killed other kids, killed everybody Jack did by, by proxy I guess, helped get thousands of ghosts killed, it was Just, it's still Just, I shouldn't have called you, go home, leave me alone, I hate you, I don't need a moirail, you're a shitty worthless nerd and I fucking hate you so just go away."

"You don't hate me and I'm not going anywhere." He wipes a fresh sheet of blood away from the cuts and sighs. "If you won't let me take you to a hospital then there's only one thing I can do to help and you're really not going to like it!" It's not like whether you 'like it' matters or not, you're staying way the fuck away from any hospitals so you just shrug. "Alright," he says, and starts opening drawers and cabinets. After a few "a-ha!" sort of noises he takes whatever it is he was gathering, goes out into your bedroom, and comes back with a pillow.

"The fuck's that for?" you ask as he hands it to you, and then he starts spreading things out in his lap and you get a little scared. There's two washcloths, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and... is that a needle and thread? Oh, that had better not fuckin mean what you think it does.

"I got really bored sometimes in the dreambubbles," John says. "And there was a Rose I used to hang out with, who was dating a Kanaya I think, I don't know, those two are apparently permanent magnets for each other no matter what timeline they're from but anyway, between the two of them I learned some things about, ah, haha, about sewing."

"Oh my god wait, wait, no," you say, but you're so tired now, you're too tired, this is definitely not all from blood loss because you've lost way more blood than you should have but not THAT much, something's still wrong inside your head. John just looks at you apologetically and hands you one of the washcloths. "What is that thing for." He giggles in a reflexive nervous way that sends a flash of sadness through the fog in your brain.

"That is to bite down on!" your moirail says, "and the pillow is so you have something to hug, if you like, wanted to hang on to something. I don't know." That's a weird idea to you for the two seconds it takes you to realize you've already got your arm wrapped around the pillow and have been squeezing it ever since he gave it to you.

"Okay," you say, and yeah it's not dignified and okay maybe you're lying pathetically in your own blood on the bathroom floor hugging a pillow and you're too weak to get up with only the one arm at the moment and your head keeps doing things that don't make sense but you're still Vriska fucking Serket and you're not gonna wimp out just because somebody's gonna stick a needle in you. Hell, it can't hurt any worse than the cuts did in the first place, right?

You hang on to the washcloth because John basically forces you to even though you're totally not going to need it, and he gets down way close to the cuts.

"This is probably going to suck really, really bad, sorry!" he says almost cheerfully, although the cheery part comes off a bit forced. And then there's a raging fire on your leg and inside your leg

and now that you think about it maybe biting down on something isn't wimping out after all, like, for one thing it'll make sure you keep the noise down so you don't wake up your mom, there's that, and anyway it looks like your body decided to bite down on that washrag and use it to muffle your screams all on its own so that's totally not indicative of weakness, that's just reflexes or instincts or something. Eventually the pain is down to a deep, hot throb, and you pull the rag out of your mouth and catch your breath and think okay well it's over with that's good, and then you look down and realize that all of that was just the feeling of John pouring on rubbing alcohol as a disinfectant. "Okay, well, here goes nothing."

It turns out that the stitching isn't as bad as the alcohol was, in fact you only spend maybe half the time muffling screams and clutching that pillow as hard as you can with your eyes shut tight. The process takes a while, though, and you pass the time with idle conversation.

"Do you think I'm pathetic?" you ask, the words slipping out without permission. You realize you're absolutely fucking terrified of what he's going to say. He looks up from what he's doing, kind of surprised.

"Of course you're not pathetic!" The needle punches through your skin again and pulls taut and you whimper kind of pathetically. "I just want to know, what happened? Why'd you do this?" You were trying not to think about that, but there's no helping it now.

"Because it's what I do, okay? I tried not to, I, it's been like a year, but," more pained whimpering replaces your words for a moment and you try to hold your eyes in stasis but you finally can't any more so you just bite down on the rag for a while as a few drops of salt water run down your cheeks. It's getting a little hard to breathe normally. "I'm not crying, okay? That's not what this is. It's involuntary, it's, it's like cutting an onion or whatever, my eyes are just watering, okay? Okay?"

"Yeah," John says, "obviously! It would be pretty weird to see Vriska Serket crying. I think that I would notice something like that." The needle makes another pass and you have things to say but your mouth is full of gross spit-soaked cloth again so you just try to make as few noises as possible. Finally he lets up for a minute to clean the needle again and you have a chance to talk.

"I thought I was done, okay? I thought last January was the last time." You cringe as he settles back down to keep working and force yourself to go on. "But then, then, now I know about, who I am, or who I was, I can't tell the difference any more, and I tried not to think about it too hard but today I couldn't stop thinking about it and I guess I just... lost it." Again with the needle, how the hell could this take so long, it feels like he's made about fifty passes even though that's totally ridiculous, and oh god you're not sure how much longer you can take this shit, why did you do this, how did you even end up in this situation?

"You don't have to punish yourself," John says. "You don't have to hurt anyone any more and you're somebody you can hurt so you don't have to hurt yourself either."

"But if I don't punish myself then who's gonna!" you say way too loud, and after a second of worrying about whether somebody heard, "I don't deserve this, I didn't earn this second life or whatever, all I did was be a piece of shit in my first one and I deserve to die eight times over, you know I doooAAAGH!" You keep that last sentence going just a bit too long and end up missing your chance with the washrag.

"Well," John says, "That's it!" He cleans your thigh off with the other washcloth again and then starts wrapping his roll of bandages tight all around your thigh, over the two stitched cuts and the other shallower ones that are only oozing now. "And you're totally wrong. I mean, for one thing, you've literally already died three times anyway! And for another, maybe you were Vriska Serket the God Tier Thief of Light once, but you're not her any more, you're Vriska Serket the human girl who's had her own sixteen years of life with her own choices and future and I don't think that Vriska did anything worth dying over, did she?" You shake your head slowly and reluctantly. Even you can't argue with John when he's being all wise and shit. You guess he got some of that from all his time in the dreambubbles, but when you think back to troll Vriska's earliest memories of him, you're not so sure he wasn't wise in a weird subtle dorky way right from the start.

"I added her," you finally tell him. He stares for a second and then he gets it and his face kind of falls and you can tell he's imagining what it must feel like to be you right now. Wow, what an idea, though, that somebody would care enough to try to imagine what it's like to be Vriska Serket. "I was at the library doing homework because I hate doing it at home I was on their shitty public wi-fi and I just made myself do it, I added gallowsCalibrator and she fucking, she was online, and she, she messaged me, and, uh, fuck that still hurts, it's making my eyes water again, she said hello and she asked me who I was and, and I should be glad she doesn't remember, I am glad she doesn't remember, she shouldn't have to remember, but something just broke and I logged out as fast as I could and when I got home everything was all wrong in my head and then..." You gesture at your bandaged leg.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, and then he shuffles forward, getting even more of your blood on his clothes, and he puts his arms around you and says "I'm really sorry" and you toss the pillow into the bathtub and press your face into his shoulder and damn, your leg must still hurt like a bitch because you can't stop making stupid noises and you're breathing all fast and random and the sting must be awful because you're getting John's shirt wet with what are absolutely eight hundred percent not real tears.

You're not sure how much time passes but it feels like it's been two eternities, one during the stitching and one just propped up against porcelain while John holds onto you and whispers things into your ear and every one of them is something no one's ever said to you before and every one of them is making you feel so pale it's almost lewd. Finally your stupid leg calms down and you wipe off that involuntary eye-water and try to get snot off of John's shoulder and he helps you sit up and talks you into getting in bed where you lie as he sits cross-legged and runs his fingertips through your hair.

"You gotta go," you slur, you're already damn near half asleep and what he's doing to your head isn't helping, "you gotta get home or your dad is gonna, he's gonna bake you more cakes," and John giggles and shrugs.

"How early do you think we'd have to wake up to Solid Snake me out of here in the morning without anybody finding out?" he asks, and even though it's completely not like that at all you know if your mom caught you having sneaked a boy into your room late at night AND he was still there in the morning, well, you don't even know what would happen but it would sure as hell be worse than being grounded.

"Way too early," you mumble, "like, 5 or something, for sure."

"Do you care?" he asks. You think about it for a minute, although really it only takes a minute because you're so sleepy now that it's hard to get things to process right.

"Not really," you say, "sleep's for... for the weak," and he grins.

"Well, I guess we're only gonna get to be weak for about five hours tonight," he says, and you fumble around in a haze of utter bone-deep weariness and fluttering guts as John Egbert wriggles under the covers fully clothed. You look at each other for a while, a little bit of distance in between but not much, your bed isn't THAT big, and then you're thinking about how this boy risked getting punished and came running all the way here in the middle of the night because he was worried about you and he fucking stitched up your leg somehow and took care of you and told you things that made you feel like you might actually be worth something and now he's actually in your bed lying right to your left, looking you in your good eye and your freak-show eye at the same time and smiling at you with exhaustion lining his face, and you muster all of your courage and use the last tiny little bit of strength left in your body to slide forward a few more inches and wrap your arm around him. After a second or two, his free arm does the same to you.

He pulls you closer and maybe it's still the dead of winter and everything around you is freezing cold, but you think that right here and now, you're the warmest you've ever been in either of your lives.


	3. the difference between medicine and poison is in the dose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for transphobia.

_well don't call my by my full name, all this is temporary_   
_it feels much better to know that you won't feel a thing_   
_don't talk about it, write it down, but don't ask for help_   
_i can't be honest with even myself_   
_did you ever wish you were somebody else?_

_circa survive - the difference between medicine and poison is in the dose_

 

* * *

 

It's Wednesday now and you guess it's a good thing human blood is easier to clean off things than troll blood is. Was, you remind yourself, and 16 years of you is relieved you remembered to remind yourself about that past tense and the other ageless part is saying things that you have no desire to acknowledge. Anyway, it's a GOOD thing, and honestly when you actually did wake up at 5 AM with a boy in your bed and a bunch of crimson bandages on your thigh, after the initial OH MY GOD WHY IS THERE SOMEONE IN MY FUCKING BED panic resolved into oh it's John that's the opposite of terrifying now let's just get him the fuck out of here before it sparks any disasters, after that you were pretty sure all the pain you went through and the effort John put into keeping you out of the hospital had just been delaying the inevitable fact of Mom finding blood somewhere and asking questions that would definitely lead to something bad. Except she didn't find any blood, even though you still haven't finished getting all the traces off of various bathroom surfaces. She barely even knocks on your door any more when she wants something, just yells at the top of her lungs or calls your cell from downstairs, and she almost never examines your room and attached bathroom even to rant at you about cleanliness any more, let alone search for spilled vital fluids. For the most part it looks like in your daily life she's finally just given up on you entirely. The blood on the sheets and blanket wasn't a problem, all you had to do was not talk about it and so she didn't talk about it either because there's already an easy enough explanation for why a girl might wake up in bed with bloodstains and even though it's more human biology and cultural bullshit that you don't really get, humans are all tip-toey and shameful about their bodily... you shake your head really hard, enough so you get a little bit of a headache, man, you must really still be working off that sleep debt, what you were actually thinking was Mom's always been squeamish about the whole topic, like way too much so earlier in your life, thanks so much for the total lack of warning about that little puberty thing, Mom, you frigid cowardly 8itch, because obviously nobody's life is complete without her own personal Stephen King inspired menstruation experience.

You haven't seen John at school since the incident, you've talked on the phone a little bit but you both find phones awkward at best and you can't talk online because you're still too scared that SHE's gonna message you again so your laptop's had its wi-fi switch stuck firmly to OFF just in case Pesterchum tries to log you in automatically on startup. Most people would delete somebody who opened a chat window and then just sat there with it empty for ten minutes before logging off but it would be just like Tere... like her to want to keep investigating and you really can't deal with that shit right now. Christ, what happened to you after that first night when you were just reasonably upset and sad and scared instead of completely wrecked? Why is this all getting worse and worse instead of 8etter?

But today you get to eat lunch with your moirail and even have the fortune to get a few minutes to talk about whatever while wandering to your next classes, and it's not like he makes you forget exactly, but he seems to know that you don't want to talk about any of it so it's just books and movies and discovering how wide the range of music John listens to is and arguing about whether Lorde is in fact an earthly art pop manifestation of Athena or if she's one of the muses. You had no idea that small talk feels good when it's with someone you (love you love him that little yelling asshole was wrong you can feel pity you still have your quadrants you aren't broken you really aren't) really care about. You're halfway to class and w8sting more than a little time when some bold sneering senior makes the inexplicably unwise decision to snipe at you as you're passing through his field of view.

"Aww, look at the cute little dykes," he says, "You two married yet?" and you stop dead in your tracks. It's not like there's any meaningful venom in there, like, wow, you called the butch girl a dyke, never heard that one before, but you (h8 this pathetic little mammal scum, you're gonna spit in his face, knee him in his weird human bulge, get him on the floor and br8k his neck with your heel, let him 8e an example to the rest of them, let him be a sign written in 8lood that says NO ONE FUCKS WITH US) know you can't take any shit or else it'll just make you a target again so you hold back a sigh and get ready to be suspended and grounded AGAIN even though you're only going to hurt him enough to teach him a lesson, but then something weird happens, which is John grabs your arm just as you're starting to raise it for a feint against this dickhole's face.

"Let's just go, Vriska," he says, "It's not worth it," and he sounds really serious and anyway he's your moirail and it is kind of his job to keep you from being a danger to people so you defer to his judgment. You do take a moment to step a little closer to the guy and pull up your eyepatch, giving him a good look at what's underneath. He steps away in shock and bangs the back of his head on a locker. You flash him a grin with lots of (fang) tooth and pull the patch back down and then chase after John because for some reason he just kept walking without you, what the hell?

"Hey, wait up," you say, and John is walking really stiffly and not trying to match your pace at all, "The fuck? What'd I just miss?" He doesn't look up from the floor when he answers.

"Nothing important," he says in a dull voice you haven't heard (since you were dead and miserable and trying so hard to figure out how to care about people) before, and you so don't have any intention of letting this go right now but all of a sudden his class is on the hall branch to your left and yours is on the right. You barely have time for an un-reciprocated see-you-later before he's vanished into a mass of bodies and you have the rest of the school day to (8rood and sulk and rant at Kanaya) worry about him before you can track him down or call. Just fucking awesome.

 

* * *

 

John Egbert is nowhere to be found. John Egbert's cell phone is shut off or out of battery power. John Egbert is not waiting for you by the gate like a puppy whose owner is coming home. He is not in the front courtyard at all. He is not anywhere you can see from the street that runs parallel to school. He is not there at the end of a long anxious trek to his frozen 8ridge. You can't decide whether to be seriously concerned or seriously hurt or both (the second one the second one and since when has Vriska Serket worried a8out anything).

You're upset. You're scared. You're not really sure what happened back there, if he's mad at you, why he wouldn't let you sock that asshole. You're probably thinking about this way too much and you should go home and w8 and talk to him later. You're not going to be a dork and let one little oddity stick to your mind so much. That would be paranoid and also fucking stupid.

You're limping up the sidewalk to his house now.

Why are you so scared? (it doesn't matter who gives a shit a8out some weird human nerd so why does it still matter) It's the way he said 'nothing important,' it's that b8ten down tone that runs totally contrary to his personality, it's the way this is the first time you've ever seen him care about being picked on even though you were the one it was really directed at and all he got was a dumb little jab at his masculinity so SHIT FUCK!

You weren't paying attention to your surroundings at all (stupid 8itch what happened to your vigilance how are you going to survive like this) and somehow walked str8 into the only other person around, a girl about your age. She's wearing a black t-shirt with some band logo you almost recognize on it and an incongruously feminine ruffled skirt that goes low enough that even from your vantage point on the ground you can't see up it, not that you would have, uh, been doing that anyway. She looks down at you, smiles in a way that's both warm and a little too wide, starts to get down to try to help you up (8itch like vriska serket needs help with anything) and then abruptly every bit of her demeanor shifts and it looks like she wants to literally kill you, the force of the hate in her eyes is terrifying, and she immediately stands up and turns and continues on her way. You struggle your way back to standing and then stare at her 8ack and wonder what the fuck just happened.

Anxiety is running kind of rampant when you make it to his door and you force yourself to just knock normally and not beat on his house like a (real troll) psycho. His dad answers, or okay, he opens the door and kind of stands there and waits for you to say something, John's dad is a nice guy but he makes you a little nervous with how he almost never actually says anything to you. To John either, from what you've observed. The bases of your horns are itchy from sweat even though it's so goddamn cold.

"Hey Mr. Egbert," you pant, your hurt leg (pathetic embarrassing it's been three whole days it should be healed by now this 8ody is so pathetic) having made the lengthy walk a lot shittier than usual. "Is John home?" The strange man nods and gestures at the stairs with a multi-colored pie. You try to smile without looking weird. "Thanks!" you remem8er to say at the last second before you head for John's room.

When you get there the door's ajar which has to be a good sign. You push the door the rest of the way open and you're starting to say "John are you okay" and then you see him standing there shirtless with blank terror in his eyes. You have never seen John Egbert without a shirt on, not even in your (real, important, 8adass) previous existence, and now you finally know why.

You shut the door again fast before he can say anything and lean against the wall to the side and stare 8lanky at the window across the stairway while you work on processing the fact that your moirail has boobs.

 

* * *

 

It's like ten minutes before he comes out, which is kind of a long time in your opinion. He's clothed again of course, and there is no sign whatsoever of 8reasts under his t-shirt. His eyes are red and puffy and he doesn't even look you in the face.

"Hi," he says, and his hollowed out monotone scores a gash right through your heart.

"Hey," you say. He leans against the railing across from you and stares blankly at the floor. Neither of you say a word for at least a solid minute. This sucks. This is confusing and you feel really shitty and you cannot for the life of you figure out why you always find these exciting new ways to fuck up. Even worse, this is awkward and that's so sad and grim and feeling awkward around John is making you feel like you're going to throw up or start doing something else em8arrassing, not that the second thing would ever really happen, o8viously.

"This is stupid," you say. "Come on." You grab his hand and drag him back into his room. He's not exactly heavy but he barely walks at all, he's 80% dead weight. Once you're inside you shut his door and lock it. When you turn around he's sitting on the edge of his bed, still doing the Shinji Ikari thing, so you sit next to him.

"You weren't supposed to know," he says. "It's not like half the school doesn't already so I guess it was pretty much gonna have to come out one way or another, but you still weren't supposed to know, let alone find out like THIS." The second sentence is hard to make out because he's saying it with his face pressed into his hands. His pose is eerily familiar, he looks like he's doing a really depressing impression of Karkat.

"John, I don't think I even understand what I wasn't supposed to know," and he just shakes his head. "I know you never wanted to pail or anything when we were matesprits, not that I really gave a shit 8ut is this why?" He stays mute and his head moves almost imperceptibly to communicate a 'no.' "Please say something, you're freaking me the fuck out." He finally looks up at you and suddenly you notice deep shadows under his eyes. How long have those been there while you weren't paying enough attention? Since the last time he was at your hive? Since the very beginning?

"I'm not a girl," John says. "I'm really not, okay? Okay?" His voice breaks a little near the end and you can see that little tremble in his lower lip that means he's trying not to cry. You still don't have the slightest idea what's going on here and you want to hold him so 8adly but you're too scared (worthless, loser, even fucking Tavros had more 8ulge than that, you're not me, can't 8e me with this useless 8ody and not one single kill under your 8elt even though you're, what, seven-odd sweeps?) to do anything because maybe he doesn't want to be touched. You could ask, if you weren't (a fucking coward) feeling so lost yourself.

"I didn't say you were," you say. It seems like there must be so much nuance to this interaction that you're o8livious to. You feel like anything you could possibly say would end up being the wrong thing. "Can you just... can you just tell me what this is?"

"Fucking Google it, if you wanna know so bad," he says, and you feel like Aradiabot just puched you in the gut. You 8oth keep just sitting there. This situation is degenerating really fast.

"Wouldn't know where to start," and it's pretty much true, what would you even type in the search bar, 'my male friend has boobs, what does that mean?' Actually that would probably be exactly the right thing to start with but you're not going anywhere or letting this moment end with 8itter tastes still lingering. Then he suddenly just flops back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, looking so terribly broken. Is that what you look like when you're alone and doing 8asically the same thing? You hope not. You hope this is the first time John Egbert has ever looked or felt this 8ad and you really hope it's the last time, too.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That wasn't fair. That was shitty." Yeah, it kinda was, but you're shitty sometimes too so whatever. "It's not that complicated, okay? When I was born they said I had this stupid... I've got quote unquote girl parts, alright? They said was a girl but I grew up and I found out I'm not. You know I'm not, right? Tell me you know that." There's a pause because you're lost again, like, how would anyone know what gender he was until at least his third sweep? Wait, no, that's not right. It must be different here. Of course it's different, you're not (yourself) an alien, you know how your own fucking world works.

"Well, duh," you say. "I mean, you just said you aren't, so..." you trail off. Your horns are itching again. You want to dig your claws into your scalp but now is not the time. You take a chance and slowly lie down next to him. He turns his head toward you miserably.

"I got older and I started finding out about the ways boys and girls are different, right, and then everything started... going to hell, all this shit that I'd been ignoring or didn't think about too much just started eating at my brain, like, all of a sudden I could see how much I hated the way people looked at me, talked to me, treated me, hated how I looked and hated how I sounded, I could put words to all these gross feelings... It got so bad so fast, Vriska, I couldn't handle it." This is so weird because how are 8oys and girls really any different, like, everybody knows that, it's not like it's important whether or not you get vestigial sacs of fat on your chest or what you sound like, the whole idea of 8oys and girls is pretty vestigial in and of itself, except, that was somewhere else, wasn't it, you're getting all mixed up, there's something wrong with your 8rain because you're on Earth for some reason and it's 8een getting hard to think str8 lately. Maybe it's something fucked up in the atmosphere.

"What'd you do, then? When was this?"

"I was thirteen and I, I don't know, I told Dad and he didn't talk to me for a few days, he just worked and locked himself in his office, and then all of a sudden I had an appointment with a doctor and we started fixing things. He's... a really good dad, if you can get past the pastries." He's looking at you, 8ut he still isn't meeting your eye, what's the deal with that, did you ruin everything just by opening a door at the wrong time? Is he br8king up with you? He's not smiling. He always smiles. Oh, god, maybe you are going to puke. He can't br8k up with you (of course he can dum8ass what did you expect did you really think you could hold onto a moirail when he's HUMAN?), are you just being paranoid? You must just 8e paranoid. You're thinking about what he's saying and the more it sinks in the worse you feel and the harder it is to ignore all these things you yourself have been pretending didn't 8other you at all. You want to grab onto him and never let go for his sake and for yours.

"Please come here," you say, somehow, against all odds (lucky br8k!), and he stares at you like you're speaking another language. "Please." He sort of twitches like he wants to but he just can't make himself. "Can I come there?" He shuts his eyes and nods almost imperceptibly. You roll over onto your side and get your arm out from under you and slide your fingers through his short wild hair. Where the fuck are his horns? You were gonna take a chance, you were gonna touch them, it's damn near the most soothing thing you can do for somebody, but of course there aren't any horns you moron, he's human, so you echo the thing he did to you a few days ago, rubbing and scritching his scalp with your claws real slow and gentle, and he looks like somebody who's been lost in the desert for days and just got given all the water in the world, he actually shudders and you almost panic because oh my god you did something wrong but then he's making this quiet sort of intermittent humming noise with his throat and you think you remember it's like the human version of purring. You think you've made that noise, even recently. This planet is really rubbing off on you.

Some time goes 8y and he curls up into a 8all and presses his face into your chest. You work up the guts to ask another question.

"Was it like this... 8efore? 8efore this weird second chance thing? When you played the game?" He doesn't say anything out loud at first, it seems like his ability to speak is cutting in and out, but you feel him nodding through your clothes. "That's so fucked up. This reality is such bullshit."

"It all happened way faster before," he says. "I was ten. Dad found an endocrinologist somewhere who wasn't a jerk and it was easier. I never had to deal with these, these stupid boobs, I didn't have three more years to learn how to hate myself, we got stuff for my hormones before puberty and I never had to have a goddamn period, Dad figured out some way to give me time off of school so I didn't have hundreds of other kids watching me start to look and sound different. The only other person who knew was, was Dave, 'cause we'd known each other forever even by then, and Dave is... well, he's Dave, you know, nothing ever phases him. He just said okay thanks for letting me know and I told him my name and he quit jokingly hitting on me and went back to his sincere irony bullshit and freestyling and we never talked about it again. Which was fine with me. More than fine! It was completely the ideal situation all things considered."

"Then that guy at school, he was..." you realize in a flash of horror that you had it totally wrong, the asshole wasn't just digging at you in general, he meant it literally, he was saying John and you were, fuck, what's that word, it starts with an L, the point is he was saying your moirail isn't a real 8oy in a world where it matters a whole lot what you are, and you hiss 8ut it comes out all weird, it sounds like you're pretending to be a meow8east or something, it's not a real hiss. "John, that guy's crazy. That doesn't make any sense. Fuck him, fuck that lusus-pailing shit8ag."

"They're all like that," John says, and you don't even know how to react to hearing something that 8rutally unfair, "they all know," and now he's crying and holding onto you tight, digging his fingers into your shirt. "Why is it like this again? Why do I have to do this twice? Why does it have to be so much WORSE this time?" You have no fucking idea what to say. You stroke his cheek hesitantly and it seems like it feels good, but you can tell it's not working the way it's supposed to. You wish you understood these aliens better, 8ecause there has to be something that has the same effect, doesn't there? Uuuuuuuugh, what are you supposed to do? He doesn't have horns, you can't pap him calm, how does this species even stay sane?

"John," you whisper 8ecause it just feels like being loud is somehow wrong for this situation, "I don't know how to help. What do I do to make a human feel 8etter? I've never even had a moirail who WASN'T an alien, I'm running on fucking guesses and that's not good enough." He doesn't respond for a long time and then slowly pulls away. You fucked it up, you said the wrong thing, you knew this was going to happen, you knew it, this is where he br8ks up with you and you go 8ack to a hazy dream-life of total solitude, and then he proves you wrong again in a way that is really, really fucking staggeringly horri8le.

"Vriska, are you okay? You... you remember you're human now, right? You've been human for sixteen years."

You 8link because what the hell is he even talking a8out, and suddenly you see the hand that was helping you take care of your moirail just a minute ago, actually see it for real, and it's soft and 8rown and not tough and gray and your fingers end in these weird useless 8lunt claws that don't even retract when you try to get them to and then you're out of the 8ed and stum8ling down the hall and everything is spinning and there are so many noises inside your head and you're puking in his upstairs 8athroom and your whole 8ody won't stop shaking and this is all wrong because you were finally taking care of him for once but now he's holding your hair 8ack while you retch and wipe away strings of sour 8ile 8ecause SOMETHING IS FUCKING WRONG AND THIS CANNOT 8E REAL YOU CANNOT SERIOUSLY 8E A HUMAN THERE IS NO WAY THAT'S REAL YOU REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS 8ULLSHIT and finally your 8ody is so drained you actually couldn't retch anymore if you wanted to and it's sort of hilarious how you keep finding yourself emotionally shattered while lying on 8athroom floors these days so you try to laugh but all that comes out is one of those surreal wounded mammalian human so8s and streams of thin liquid that are clear instead of cerulean and in this moment, after so many sweeps that you couldn't possibly count them all, you finally realize that Vriska fucking Serket does, in fact, cry.


	4. this side of the blue

_and the rest of our lives will the moments accrue_   
_when the shape of their goneness will flare up anew_   
_hen we do what we have to do_   
_which is all you can do on this side of the blue_

_joanna newsom - this side of the blue_

 

* * *

 

  
It's actually a while 8efore you get off of the weirdly clean floor of John's a8lution cham8er, and during that time most of the alienness in your mind is cleared up; you're finally pretty much yourself again, and you're also pretty sure this ridiculous human 8ody is literally gonna die just from puking, which, really, would that even 8e such a 8ad thing considering how much you've just realized you h8 every universe, every multiverse, every idiotic layer of reality you've traveled through? It's hard to feel anything except gross thin human tears drying on your disgustingly soft cheeks and the hideous churning in whatever humans have where stomachs are supposed to go (humans have fucking stomachs, what is wrong with you, you knew that already anyway). You pretty much forget altogether than John is still there until he sits cross-legged on the floor right 8y you.

"Try not to move too much," he says, as if you could do that even if you wanted to move ever again, which you don't, and you're infuriated 8y how gentle he's 8eing with you, you'd like nothing 8etter than to smack him in the the face and watch him cry (yeah yeah keep telling yourself that), and then he slowly, carefully, like he's not exactly sure how it works 8ut he's making himself try it anyway, slowly and carefully he strokes your cheek with his palm, fingertips tracing the puffy part all the way down to your jawline, and this 8ody shouldn't 8e equipped for what he's doing but apparently your mind is 8ecause everything goes fuzzy and something completely shocking (oh my god get over yourself, always playing the bad bitch, you're worse than i am) happens, which is you stop 8eing pissed and your whole thinkpan twists around, your eyes flutter shut without asking your permission, and after that a weaker troll might think that the only thing in this 8izzare world she wants is for this 8oy to hold her and tell her everything is going to 8e okay somehow.

"Fuck... you," you rasp, eye trying its 8est to roll 8ack into your head. "Fuck all of this, just leave me alone, just..." You're tired, so tired, have you ever 8een this tired 8efore? You must have, this can't 8e the maximum, 8ut right now it barely matters. "Just let me sleep, just let me go."

"I'll be back in a minute," he almost-whispers, "it's gonna be okay, we'll figure this out, something like this happened to me when I remembered too, I'm here for you," and you sort of hiccup and shake 8ecause, actually you're not even sure why (holy shit talk about denial i cannot fuckin believe that i used to be you), you're not sure a8out anything any more. You think some time passes 8ut not a lot, and then he's 8ack with a glass of water and some weird little 8its of human food.

"Fuck do you want, thought I told you to get lost," you mum8le half-heartedly, and he sort of half-shrugs and half-smiles and goddammit 8ut he gets your cheek again and some part of you can tell that it's defin8tly not working the way it's supposed to 8ut it still sends little tingles all through your suddenly slack 8ody while he talks.

"Come on," he says, and he actually tries to get you to move or something, at least he hooks his hands under you and strains, "You have to sit up and get some food and water back in you before this gets any worse," and you could give a shit less a8out whether anything is getting any worse 8ut he just sounds so worried and apparently you care (fuckin deal with it you're pale for him and you'd know what that means way better than i do so stop pissing in my brain with your lone wolf horseshit or i swear to god I'M gonna be puking next) so you struggle until you're propped up against a ca8inet and [[[[8y the way how a8out you shut UUUUUUUUP you little alien shit what the fuck do you know, you're not even real, you're just another stain on this worthless eternity that some8ody stuck here to make me fucking misera8le]]]] he hands you some weird p8stries and the water and tells you to take it slow so you don't start throwing up again.

This is weird, it's so weird, it's all wrong, no8ody ever took care of you 8efore (he tried before he got double-killed and you wouldn't let him, you know he did, even you're not delusional enough to act like that never happened) and it feels... you don't really understand how it feels 8ut there's a tiny part of you somewhere that never wants it to stop. That just wants to say fuck it, give up and 8e weak and let some8ody in. The realization is a sort of sick scared pulse of shock that you can actually feel in your spine. You're not even remotely sure how to process that, the idea that Vriska Serket could possi8ly want or need a moirail, to deal with the fact that you actually just admitted to yourself that some part of you is seriously, honestly GLAD that you're vulnera8le and 8eing taken care of 8y someone who isn't you, even if that part of you is the kind you'd need a high-powered cylindrical magnification apparatus to see. Well, whatever, so there's a crack in your armor somewhere, you can fix it l8r and you're o8viously not going to let that idiotic part of your consciousness have any effect on your 8ehavior.

 

* * *

 

You spend the next half hour letting that idiotic part of your consciousness completely dict8 your 8ehavior. It's kind of pathetic.

 

* * *

 

After you've gotten 8ack enough strength to stand up and even walk, you somehow make it out of Eg8ert's hive without falling down the stairs and some8ody else's memory is telling you there's somewhere you have to go. John isn't sure you should 8e walking that far after all the puking 8ut that irrit8ing 8itch who won't get out of your 8rain is 8eing pretty insistent and after she's forced you to poke yourself in the good eye a few times you acquiesce 8ecause moving sounds 8etter than just sitting around anyway, may8e you'll 8e a8le to think a little more clearly, may8e you could use the exercise, isn't walking supposed to 8asically 8e like some miracle cure for feeling 8ad?

Neither of you talks much on the way there, it's o8vious that he's freaked out and doesn't really know what to say or do and you sure as fuck don't know either, 8ut the 8itter cold is somehow a comfort, it sort of reminds you of dark seasons 8ack home when the only really warm place was your hive, even if this is a lot more extreme. Mostly you spend the grueling trek communic8ing with HER. At first you're yelling 8ack and forth in your shared mindspace a8out how you're stealing each other's 8odies (I WAS BORN IN HERE, THIS IS MINE, YOU'RE NOT ME AND I DON'T NEED YOU FUCKING UP MY SHIT LIKE THIS) [[[[GO TO HELL YOU USELESS GODDAMN PUPA, I'M THE ONE WHO KILLED THE 8LACK KING, I'M THE ONE WHO COULD HAVE KILLED JACK, I EARNED THIS!!!!!!!!]]]], 8ut after a few minutes there's not a lot more to say a8out that and you're so fucking pissed that this whole thing is happening in general that it's hard to muster any more genuine vitriol and then 8y the time you're nearing your destin8ion, there's some kind of weird kinship forming and the two of you are mostly just 8itching together a8out what a load of shit this whole situation is.

The worst part is when you start figuring out that you actually don't really have all that much against her; she's misera8ble and full of h8 just like you are and she can't stand this inane planet either even though her reasons are totally different than yours, and you figure well, hell, may8e it's true that she hasn't even killed any8ody 8ut she pro8a8ly would have if she could've gotten away with it without this world's 8izarre equivalent of drones giving a shit for some reason, dragging her off and then m8king her rot for who knows how many sweeps in a place where nothing matters at all and pro8a8ly some of the other girls stuck in there for whatever stupid minor 'crimes' might have the kind of one-sided 8lack interest that runs deep enough that, well, neither of you want to think too hard a8out the details but even on Alternia 8ack 8efore it was destroyed that kind of 8ehavior would not have 8een considered remotely accepta8le. If you'd grown up here may8e you wouldn't have killed any8ody either, no matter how much they pissed you off or treated you like a su8-sentient or tried to 8eat you down.

After what's most likely not even an hour 8ut feels like a couple of human 'days' you and her and John are on top of a 8ridge that crosses a frozen river and then you look at your... you have to admit it, there's no point in fighting yourself or your human doppelganger over this one, you look at your moirail and you realize he's just 8een walking alongside you in nearly total silence and he's worrying and 8efore you woke up in John's a8lution cham8er you'd never really even thought a8out what weird things red conciliatory romance could make you feel 8ut you wish you'd paid more attention to him and you hope he's okay, you think a8out how he somehow made himself stop crying in the middle of a pretty serious looking 8reakdown to make sure YOU were okay. You remem8er human Vriska and John sitting in the stupidest possi8le place on this piece of architecture and so it reson8s with you too even though you've never really 8een here and you glance over at him kind of quickly and carefully and the look on his face is not one of any of the looks you want to see and you haven't got a goddamned clue how to proceed.

(just talk to him already, god, can't you tell this is the first time you've ever really loved anyone, or 'pitied' anyone or whatever, do you really want to fuck it up?)

[[[[Why don't you fucking leave me alone for like, one second or something 8ecause I was pretty sure that five minutes ago there was some sort of truce going on here???????? Like, the kind where you don't get to order me around just 8ecause this shitty 8ody is technically yours?Man, goddamn you for 8eing right a8out this. Goddamn you for being nice to me, really, just FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!]]]]

You take a moment after that harsh little exchange to try to collect yourself. You're freezing and 8urning at the same time, you're the gr8est troll in existence and you're the 8iggest failure of a human imagina8le, you're a monster and a murderer and you're a fighter who refuses to let herself 8e oppressed 8ecause her skin is the 'wrong' color, you're so many things all at once and it's too much so you tell her to 8ack the fuck off for a minute or something so you can actually, like, move or talk or really do anything at all.

"Sorry a8out... uh..." trailing off, you realize a little too l8 that you didn't actually decide where your sentence was going. You look over at John and he's already looking at you; you wonder for how long and what expressions were on your face that you didn't think about 8ut he must have 8een watching, see those awful 8ags under his eyes looking even worse than 8efore and god, you're the worst person ever, aren't you. "I don't know. Sorry a8out everything. Sorry a8out me in general. Sorry a8out every Vriska there's ever 8een." It's weird, apologizing to some8ody and actually really meaning every word of it, feeling the word 'sorry' on your tongue without it having something to do with irons and fires.

"So this is troll Vriska right now, huh," he says. You just sort of nod. You know it can't 8e the answer he wanted 8ut that doesn't make it any less true. "It's okay, really. Like I said, I kind of had something like this happen. When I remembered everything it was really shitty and confusing and sad, and then it felt like I was sort of half ghost John and half new John. But it was still just, I don't know, me and myself mostly, and I guess there's probably a lot more going on with you than that, even though it think it must be the same sort of process?"

"Yeah, that sounds a8out right, I mean... This human me, she's o8viously, well, she's me, except she's not 8ecause she's a different fucking species, and she had a whole different life, so she's not me at all, except... she still is. I don't even get how the fuck that works. I guess this universe or... afterlife or layer of reality or whatever is just as damn confusing as the last one, 8asically."

"Yep," he says, "That about sums it up," and he rests his el8ows on the wall overlooking the river and when he doesn't say anything else for a little while you try to do the same thing without thinking a8out how the fuck you're going to make it work. It's so weird and unsettling only having one arm again, you spent so long with Equius's ro8ot repl8cment lim8 even though THAT was really weird and hard to get used to, and then Aradia8ot 8eat you to death and all of a sudden you had your real arm and eye 8ack, and then even when you died again your ghost was 8asically whole. 8alancing is seriously a pain, although it does help that like three and a half sweeps of missing her left arm seems to have made human Vriska's right one strong as fuck for a human. No wonder she managed to 8eat the shit out of a 8unch of guys who were half again as 8ig as she is. 8ut man, goddamn, what must her life have 8een like, spending all that time getting 8y with one fucking arm? The eye, yeah, okay, that's one thing, but fuuuuuuuuck. While you're trying to even imagine that you a8ruptly discover that while may8e human Vriska could figure out a way to 8alance on one el8ow for more than ten seconds you sure as fuck can't, and you're 8racing for a painful impact against old masonry when all of a sudden John just... catches you.

You stand there together for a while, mind-8endingly close; you're doing the el8ow thing with the lim8 you've actually got, and he has one arm wrapped around your 8ack. The offensive lack of su8tlety in potential metaphor that this whole 8ridge-8alance cuddling thing is shoving in your face is 8asically disgusting, 8ut it's not half as disgusting as the way you've just discovered how 8adly you needed something like this, or an 8th as disgusting as the following realization that you've needed something like this as 8adly as you did for so long 8etween 8eing alive for six sweeps and then dead and questing for so long in the Furthest Ring that time lost all meaning so long ago that it's 8asically dark comedy. The un8eliava8le relief you never knew you'd 8een w8ing for is literally making you feel like you're gonna pass out. You guess it's a good thing you've got a moirail to keep you steady. You guess a lot of things you never even thought a8out can 8e good things, after all.

"Hey," you say. "Look, I didn't mean to lose my shit like a scared wiggler with food poisoning in the middle of you talking a8out something totally fucking important. You know you can, you can keep explaining, I mean if you have more to say or you want to." You squeeze your eye shut, take a deep 8reath and swallow hard to try to wring out your next sentence. "And I know it's not, it's not the... it's not the same, 8ut..." Those gross human tears are welling up in your eye again, 8ut you make yourself say it anyway 8ecause if there's one thing you ever managed to learn in all of your lives, it's that when shit gets real you say what you're thinking and don't look 8ack. "I'm not exactly feeling gr8 a8out this 8ody I've got now, either."

"I kind of figured that," John says, "especially after all the puking and stuff. I mean, you've got different skin, your horns are gone, your claws are gone, who knows what else is different, like... that's a lot of shit to deal with." It takes him may8e ten or fifteen seconds 8efore he notices how hard you're suddenly shaking and the way you can't stop swallowing 8ecause there's a decent chance you're a8out to start throwing up all over again. "Oh, jeez, shit, I'm so sorry, that was really blunt, I didn't mean to just throw it all in your face like that, I..."

"It's not even just that 8ullshit," you say when it 8ecomes clear he doesn't know what to do to make up for all of that, not that you really think it was his fault. This whole day feels like one long 8ack and forth where one of you runs out of 8rain power and the other has to pick up where their moirail left off. At least that makes sense. At least it's not just you who's at a loss for every other fucking word you need to get out of your stupid mouth.

"What else is wrong? I mean, if you want to talk about it. If you're feeling okay enough to talk about it." He looks so misera8le right now that you almost wish dou8le dying really had 8een the end of everything 8ecause this infinite moment is so fucked up it's 8asically incredible. That's not the only thing, though, 8ecause the way you're thinking, the way you're talking is starting to feel a little 8it off. Something's slipping and melting in your head, and you're starting to get scared that it's not just 8ecause of how totally fucking shitty you feel. You're starting to feel less and less like you and more and more like... her. You can't deal with thinking a8out that at all, though, so you just force yourself to keep talking.

"It's stupid," you say, and the look he gives you makes it instantly clear that he doesn't 8uy for half a second that what you're gonna say is actually stupid at all. "It's so stupid, I just... There's other stuff missing, too." He looks down and the arm around you squeezes tighter. "I don't think any8ody ever really told you much a8out troll, you know... a8out any of that shit, 8ut I lost one part and the other one isn't even the same, not really. It's all fucked up and it feels so weird and, it's kind of like what you were saying, it's just, it's gross and I don't..." Know what to do a8out it, that's what you almost managed to say, 8ut you didn't, you didn't manage to say it 8ecause you know the answer already and the answer is 'nothing.' The answer is you're totally and completely fucked.

"God," John half-sighs. "God dammit." His free arm is pressed against his forehead, and it's painfully o8vious that he's trying not to cry, that even though the two of you aren't really having the same pro8lem, he's way, way too familiar with the general idea of what you're feeling. You want to say something nice, something that only hurts you and not the both of you the way that every other fucking thing you've said to anyone has, 8ut not one thing that comes to mind isn't a lie and you're a good goddamn liar 8ut this is John Eg8ert, this is your moiral, so you do what you've always done when emotions are getting heavy and say what you're really thinking.

"Yeah," you say. "God dammit's a8out right." There's 8ile eating at the 8ack of your throat and 8efore it's too late to keep it all down you distract yourself o8serving the river 8elow. From up here it almost looks like a long stream of crystal, like a massive vein of pale quartz stretching off into the distance 8efore it curves away and out of view, pure and 8lue-white except for... What is that, anyway? Something kind of shadowy is moving along the frozen water. You squint and try to get your eye to focus 8etter on the shape. "There's some8ody on the river," you say, kind of 8affled, especially when you notice that whoever it is seems to 8e walking so totally normally across all of that slippery ice that it's actually a little 8it creepy.

"Hey, yeah... what's that all about? That is not a safe place to be walking at all! There are like so many spots where the ice must be really thin." John joins you in pretending nothing's wrong for a few precious moments and studies the person all that way 8elow. The figure would 8e a lot easier to make sense of if its 8ack wasn't to you, 8ut once details start taking 8etter shape you think it's either wearing a two-tone dress or a 8lack t-shirt and a long skirt.

"I think it's a girl," wishing you had 8inoculars or something 8ecause you swear you know that outfit from somewhere. "Jeeeeeeeez, she is so not outfitted for this weather, how is she not freezing? Fuck, how is she not literally freezing, like, I'm pretty sure whatever she's got on is not even close to thick enough to 8e warding off hypothermia."

"HEY!" John yells a8ruptly, scaring the shit out of you. "IT'S REALLY NOT SAFE DOWN THERE, YOU SHOULD MAYBE TRY TO GET UP THAT SNOWBANK WHERE YOU CAN'T FALL THROUGH THE ICE AND TOTALLY DIE!" The girl turns around for a second and somehow she keeps on walking into the distance without interrupting her stride in the least even though that doesn't make any sense at all. It's a reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally eerie thing to watch, it's worse than how fucked up moonwalking is when you stop to think a8out that kind of shit and just seeing it sends a chill down your spine that somehow manages to go deeper than the one that Michigan's winter is already giving you. Her head tilts up to the 8ridge and she waves 8riefly 8efore completely ignoring Eg8ert's advice, reversing that surreal smooth one-8y and then vanishing around a 8end in the river that's o8scured 8y a high wall of snow.

"I think I've seen her 8efore," you say, "Like, really recently. I can't remember when, though." You know you have, you're sure it wasn't that long ago, it might even have 8een today because today feels like a8out eight trillion sweeps. You're working on bringing some clarity back to the vague memory in question when a wave of really 8ad dizziness buzzes you and all of a sudden even John can barely keep you upright.

"Shit, shit, that was really sudden, oh jeez" he says, "oh man, I'm sorry, this is the bad part, this is the part that sucks a whole lot, but it's short, don't be scared, it's already almost over," but you're really fucking scared 8ecause there's something blisteringly wrong going on inside your head, your thoughts are starting to scram8le and human Vriska's been quiet for a while 8ut you can hear her trying to say something to you, something that's being swirled away 8y the disaster that you weren't going to mention, that you were so, so hideously afraid was going to happen inside your broken 8rain.

"There's only room in here for one of us, isn't there," you manage to croak, knowing it has to be true, it's the only thing that makes any sense, and the way that John wordlessly hugs you as tight as he can is all the answer you need. "Am I just going to... disappear? It's her 8ody, it's her brain, it's... I'm the one who doesn't 8elong, aren't I? This is what it felt like... this is what it felt like when that guy... when I should have stopped existing." Physical symptoms like nausea and tears are so far beneath what you're dealing with right now that you might as well not 8e feeling them at all. Everything you are is warped, is starting to break down and swirl away.

"You're gonna be okay," your moirail says, and you want to believe him so 8adly but you can feel it getting worse, feel yourself fading somehow, or maybe not fading but at least changing in a way that might 8e basically the same. "All of you is Vriska Serket, you're one person, I know it feels like you're going to lose yourself but you're not, not really, it's not like what you think, it's... it's synthesis, it's puzzle pieces coming back together, you're becoming you again, all of you. I know how bad it feels, I know how terrifying it is, I'm really sorry, Vriska, I'm really really sorry, I wish I could help, I'm sorry I can't make it easier to handle."

"It's not nice to lie to somebody who's dying," you whisper, because whispering is all you can muster; somewhere far away you can hear your other voice expressing exactly the same sentiment. "I think I just wish... I wish it could have happened a little bit faster. I wish I didn't have time to feel it all." You definitely, truly can't stand up any more, the only reason you're not completely prone already is John straining as hard as he can to hold you, which is still really only enough to keep you sort of diagonal, cradled in his arms.

At least you get to die in someone's arms, you think with one of the last of the thoughts you're pretty sure will ever be your own as John's voice becomes indistinct and even your good eye blurs away into nothing, not blackness but something even less, at least you got one last hour and a half to be the real Vriska Serket, at least for this real, final death, you're not the villain, no clock is striking Just, you're not disappearing alone.

At least this time, at the end of everything you are and everything you ever were, somebody cares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how long this fic is going to be in total but at least I finally got the fourth chapter done, and hopefully it won't be as long a wait between this and the next update. To anybody reading, I apologize profusely for writing this stuff! It's starting to look like I have a disease where I can't end a chapter of anything without somebody suffering horribly. Let me know if Hussie died and I'm starting to absorb his sadistic wayward spirit.


	5. diagnosis

_pulled along or pulled apart_   
_the diagnosis of a foreign frame of heart_   
_i have a story that i'd like to tell you_   
_it's littered with settings and second takes_   
_i have a feeling that hums with the streetlights_   
_and hides under ice in always-frozen lakes_

_the weakerthans - diagnosis_

 

* * *

enter handle: arachnidsGrip  
enter password: *******  
login successful!

 

gallowsCalibrator [ GC ] has begun pestering arachnidsGrip [ AG ]

 

GC: F1N4LLY! TH3 MYST3RY G1RL R3TURNS

 

arachnidsGrip has gone idle after 5 minutes of inactivity

 

GC: 4WWW COM3 ON NOT TH1S LONG S1L3NC3 TH1NG

GC: 4R3 YOU GO1NG TO LOG OUT FOR D4YS 4G41N 4ND M4K3 M3 W4ST3 T1M3 SN1FF1NG YOU OUT ON GOOGL3

GC: 1LL F1ND YOU SOM3WH3R3 4ND 1LL F1ND YOUR P3RSON4L 1NFORM4T1ON 4ND TH3 N3XT TH1NG YOU KNOW YOUR PHON3 W1LL R1NG >:D

AG: Hi!

AG: There, I said a word. Now a sentence, even. Now a total of a word and three sentences!!!!!!!!

AG: Are you happy now that I said something even though you just jumped on me like a psycho less than 8 seconds after I logged in?

GC: M4YB3

GC: 1LL B3 H4PP13R WH3N YOU T3LL M3 WHO YOU 4R3

AG: Who I am?

GC: Y3S TH4T W4S D3F1N1T3LY TH3 QU3ST1ON 1 4SK3D JUST NOW

AG: Still kind of working on that one, I guess. No8ody you know, at least.

GC: ST1LL WORK1NG ON 1T? HOW MYST3R1OUS MYST3RY G1RL

AG: It's not really mysterious so much as it's a pain in the fucking ass. W8, what makes you think I'm a girl?

GC: JUST 4 HUNCH

GC: 1M R1GHT THOUGH 4R3NT 1

AG: ::::|

GC: H4H4H4H4 1 KN3W 1T

AG: Either way my personal inform8ion's none of your 8usiness! Don't even think a8out pulling any sort of investigative 8ullshit. Didn't your mom ever teach you not to pry into other people's 8usiness?

GC: MY MOM 1S D34D

AG: Oh god. Uh. I'm sorry?

GC: 1 W4S JUST K1DD1NG SH3S ON V4C4T1ON 4CTU4LLY

AG: Jesus, don't scare me like that!!!!!!!! That's not even funny.

GC: 4 P3RM4N3NT V4C4T1ON 1N H34V3N B3C4US3 1 W4S DOUBL3 K1DD1NG SH3S 4CTU4LLY D34D 4ND H4S B33N FOR 4 LONG T1M3 NOW

AG: Okay now I don't even know what to 8elieve 8ut fuck you, like, a lot.

GC: 1T DO3SNT M4TT3R WH4T YOU B3L13V3 SH3 W1LL ST1LL B3 D34D

GC: YOU TYP3 SLOW MYST3RY G1RL

AG: Jeez, sorry for your inconvenience, it's not exactly easy typing with one hand.

GC: WOW

AG: W8 THAT ISN'T WHAT I........ oh my god. That didn't mean what it sounded like it meant, like, at all, I seriously only have one arm.

GC: OH TH4T SOUNDS FRUSTR4T1NG SORRY 1 W4SNT TRY1NG TO B3 1NS3NS1T1V3

AG: I was kidding, one of them just doesn't have any feeling in it right now.

GC: H4 H4 WH4T 4 H1L4R1OUS TURN4ROUND 3XC3PT TH4T 1T 1SNT H1L4R1OUS B3C4US3 YOUR3 3NT1R3LY JOK1NG BUT MY MOM 1S R34LLY D34D

AG: And my arm won't have any feeling in it ever again apart from phantom lim8 syndrome 8ecause I was dou8le kidding too. My arm also happens to 8e on a permanent vac8ion in heaven and has 8een for a long time now!

GC: OK4Y NOW 1 DONT 3V3N KNOW WH4T TO B3L13V3

AG: It doesn't matter what you 8elieve 8ecause your skepticism won't make me any less of an amputee 8y way of childhood car crash. So if you wanna keep this up you'd 8etter get used to the conversation taking a little fucking longer than the ones you're used to.

GC: TH1S 1S GR34T 1 H4V3NT H4D TH1S MUCH FUN T4LK1NG TO 4NYON3 ONL1N3 1N MONTHS 4ND MONTHS

AG: Well, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, then, 8ecause I'm sure as hell not.

GC: NO W3 4R3 BOTH H4V1NG FUN OR 3LS3 YOU WOULDNT ST1LL B3 T4LK1NG

GC: YOUR BLU3B3RRY L13S 4R3 D3L1C1OUS BUT TH3YR3 ST1LL L13S 4ND YOULL H4V3 TO TRY 4S H4RD 4S YOU D1D 34RL13R 1F YOU W4NT TO FOOL M3 4G41N >:]

AG: Why did I ever think this was a good idea???????? Making a mental note right here and now to delete this stupid fucking program and start making 8etter life decisions.

GC: L3TS M4K3 TH1S 3V3N MOR3 FUN 4ND G3T TO KNOW 34CH OTH3R 4 L1TTL3 B1T

GC: W3LL PL4Y 4 G4M3 WH3R3 W3 T4K3 TURNS 4SK1NG 4 QU3ST1ON TH4T TH3 OTH3R H4S TO 4NSW3R 4ND TH3R3 W1LL B3 NO 4SK B4CKS

AG: Fine. Whatever. It's your game, so how a8out you start.

GC: WH3R3 D1D YOU G3T MY H4NDL3

AG: Non-technical cheating! The spirit of the thing was "getting to know each other," so you lose a turn. What's your real name?

GC: MY R34L N4M3S T3R3Z1 PYROP3

GC: 4R3 YOU M1SS1NG 4NY OTH3R 1MPORT4NT BODY P4RTS

AG: Daaaaaaaamn, right for the fucking jugular. That depends on how I'm feeling at whatever time random insensitive 8itches happen to ask me. Right now, yeah. I'm also 8lind in one eye, that one's a free8ie. Isn't life just fucking awesome?

GC: TH3 MYST3R13S D33P3N >:[ YOUR3 R34LLY BL1ND 1N ON3 3Y3 HUH

AG: Yes, really. This isn't gonna go anywhere productive if you assume I'm lying a8out everything, especially in a game a8out exchanging facts. And I'm gonna go easy on you and not count that as two questions in a row. You should 8e gr8ful.

AG: Do you like roleplaying? Or roleplaying games, I guess?

GC: 1M GO1NG TO GO 34SY ON YOU 4ND COUNT TH4T 4S ON3 QU3ST1ON 1NST34D OF TH3 TWO QU3ST1ONS 1T T3CHN1C4LLY W4S

GC: Y3S 1 LOV3 ROL3PL4Y1NG 4ND WH4T ROL3PL4Y1NG G4M3S 1 C4N PL4Y WH1CH 4R3NT TH4T M4NY B3C4US3 1M L3G4LLY BL1ND

GC: TH3R3S SUR3 4 LOT OF BL1NDN3SS GO1NG ON 1N TH1S CONV3RS4T1ON

GC: 1F YOU COULD GO B4CK 1N T1M3 4ND CH4NG3 ON3 TH1NG TH4T YOU R3GR3T DO1NG WH4T WOULD YOU CH4NG3 4ND WHY

 

arachnidsGrip has gone idle after 5 minutes of inactivity

 

GC: 4R3 YOU ST1LL TH3R3 SP1D3RY MYST3RY G1RL

AG: I gotta go. Talk to you l8r.

 

arachnidsGrip [ AG ] has ceased pestering gallowsCalibrator [ GC ]

 

arachnidsGrip [ AG ] has begun pestering ectoBiologist [ EB ]

 

AG: hey john hows it going

EB: whoa, you're online? i thought you were avoiding using pesterchum.

EB: wait a sec.

EB: you're not typing with proper grammar or capitalization right now.

AG: so fucking what

EB: i'm coming over to your house immediately, that's what!

AG: What, no, it's like 10 PM. Jesus, what's your pro8lem?

EB: you are not okay, that is my problem.

AG: No, I'm fine, I'm just tired. Is typing slightly differently than I did in a past life a crime?

EB: that's a really flimsy excuse and you know it. see you in ten minutes!

AG: You can't walk to my house in ten minutes, what the hell?

 

ectoBiologist [ EB ] has ceased pestering arachnidsGrip [AG]

 

* * *

About twelve minutes pass before you hear the sound of a car pulling up to the sidewalk in front of your house. Oh my god, did he get his dad to drive him here? What is it with you and causing people trouble by being a fucking idiot and making them worry about you in the middle of the night? It's not like your mom is gonna let him in anyway. You just wasted his time and his dad's time, too. Awesome. And then a few minutes later you hear two sets of footsteps on the stairs followed by a sharp knock on your door.

"Your little boyfriend here just showed up and insisted it was important I let him talk to you," your mom says.

"He's not my boyfriend!" you say loudly through the door at almost exactly the same moment you hear John saying "She's not my girlfriend!" The door to your room opens and you're glad you had time to get dressed again before he arrived. Your moirail slips quickly by your mom and through the door, a scared expression on his face.

"Well, you're keeping that door wide open as long as he's here, young lady," your mom says. Oh my god, what is her fucking problem? You're sixteen years old and she's got no right to decree that you surrender all privacy just because of her gross assumptions.

"Like hell I am," you say, and her eyes narrow. You find you couldn't care less. You've dealt with way scarier things than your stupid mom. Hell, you've dealt with having a mom who would have killed you and feasted on your corpse if you hadn't been a dutiful little murder-slave.

"Don't take that tone with me, Vriska." You get up, slam the door in her face, and then lock it. "Open that door this instant!" You can hear the little clicks as she fumbles pointlessly with the knob. "You're lucky I'm letting you have a boy over this late at all, especially on a school night!"

"Shut up, you frigid goddamned bitch, we're not fucking, why do you always have to make everything about something it's not? Leave us alone, go get off on power tripping somewhere else for once." There's a short silence.

"We're having a serious conversation about this later, Vriska," she says coldly, and for some reason you start thinking about the unpleasant ratio of times she acts like she loves you versus times she acts like you're a hindrance she can't get rid of.

"I don't give a shit, just go already," you growl, except you keep on growling even after the words are out, and for a second it sounds human and then your throat behaves in a way that you weren't expecting it to. The noise you make sounds like a large and vicious dog's furious warning. "I SAID JUST GO ALREADY!" She doesn't say anything more, just becomes a series of thumps that fade with distance. You turn to where John is standing, wide-eyed and concerned, then go sit on the edge of your bed. He follows and sits next to you.

"I think you're maybe going to get in trouble for this," he says quietly. You shrug. "Your mom is really scary, she tried to grill me about what I was doing here and it sounded like she barely even cared when I told her I was worried about you."

"Are you fucking serious? Motherfucker. She keeps this shit up and she'll be the one in trouble," you say. Actually, you're starting to feel like she's already kept her shit up long enough to be in trouble herself for once.

"Hey, don't do anything crazy, okay? Seriously, please? You're kind of scaring me a little right now." You are, too, you can hear it in his voice and really you thought you couldn't hate yourself any more thoroughly tonight but apparently you still have a way of constantly doing things that prove that no matter how bad things get, there's always room for more justified self-hatred. There's nothing you can think of to say that you can actually say at the moment, somehow. 'Sorry' and 'I guess maybe I'll try' don't seem to be options.

"Is it cool if I kill myself?" is what ends up coming out of your mouth, which is not a thing you had planned on at all. "Like, you don't have to watch or anything, and it won't be a surprise so that's not so bad." He doesn't say anything. The only sound in the room is the curtains rustling as the icy night air passes them by. You realize you're shivering. When did it get so cold in here? Why do you always leave the window open, anyway?

"Vriska," John says, "What happened tonight?" He reaches out to put an arm around you and you jerk away. When you turn your head and see his face he looks like you just slapped him and you hate yourself even MORE. Fucking incredible.

"I did something really stupid," you say, trying to figure out where to even start or if you should even bother, although not bothering would be pointless anyway because he's gonna pry it out of you if you try to avoid the subject, especially after what you just said.

"Logging into Pesterchum?" Man, why is this kid so perceptive? You were dead way longer than he was, or at least you think you were, who can say when the Furthest Ring was involved, but still, you should be the one who figures everything out virtually instantly. Damn it.

"... Yeah. She messaged me again. And we actually talked this time." Why the hell did you talk to her? What'd you think was gonna happen? That it'd be okay somehow, that you wouldn't end up regretting it more than you'll ever be able to put into words?

"I guess it didn't go well, then," he says. You sigh and try to compose your words.

"It went well enough, mostly. She really doesn't remember me, and I'm mostly glad because she shouldn't have to deal with that shit. But so... I don't know. She trolled me pretty good basically instantly, I trolled her pretty good back right after that, she said she hadn't had this much fun talking to anybody online in months and I pretended I was mad at her but she saw through it, I don't know. It was really stupid and childish and it made me... really, really happy, actually. Hopeful, even."

"I'm kind of sensing a 'but' coming up, here," John says.

"Yeaaaaaaaah. She said we should get to know each other better by playing a game where we ask each other questions with no ask backs or whatever, and I said okay because I figured if she asked anything that might lead her closer to getting her memories back I'd just lie and I could, I don't know, I guess I was hoping I'd find out how similar she was to her troll self although she seemed pretty fucking similar already, plus I could get some idea if her human life was a good one and not horrible like her troll one was, and I asked her if she liked roleplaying games and, and, fuck, she said she liked roleplaying but she couldn't play most roleplaying games because she's... she's legally blind."

"Oh," he says quietly. "Damn, I'm sorry. So did you stop talking to her after that? That seems like a thing you'd do."

"Yeah, basically, but... it was her turn to ask a question and however she's using a computer while being blind in this reality she can still get messages sent faster than I can type mine, cause, you know, one hand and everything, and she..." Oh god, you hate yourself so much that your thoughts lately have been sounding like what you figure the inside of Karkat's mind must have sounded like all the time.

When your two selves merged, human Vriska's conscious self-loathing apparently unlocked a fucking hoard of repressed guilt and regret and bitterness and outright self-HATRED the size of a denizen's grist cache that troll Vriska must have been carrying her entire existence and the truth is that afterwards you've pretty much wanted to kill yourself every day. It's only been four days, actually, so maybe that's not a long time, but all four of those nights you've gone into the bathroom and taken out a razor and stared at it for minutes and thought about just... finding out if there's another life beyond this one or not. You think if going through with it wouldn't hurt John, hurt him a hell of a lot and leave him alone in this hateful shithole of a town, you would have done it by now.

"Hey, it's okay, take your time," John says quietly, and you realize you're hyperventilating a little bit and the cold isn't the only reason you're shaking any more. Still should've at least closed that stupid fucking window, though.

"She asked me, 'if you could go back in time and change one thing you regret doing, what would you change and why?' And I sat there for like eight minutes and then said I had to go and closed the window and then I messaged you." You can tell by the heartrending look on his face what your own must look like right now.

"Can I... give you a hug? You kind of, uh, well, I thought I should ask before I..." and he trails off when you start crying, and when crying turns into sobbing he just wraps an arm around you and this time you don't jerk away, you just hang your head and bawl and squeeze him back as tight as you can, and goddamn he's so fucking considerate because he always subtly engineers situations so that he's sitting on your right side where you can reach him if you want to or need to, the asshole.

"John, it's my fault," you manage to get out through your misery. "If I'm missing an arm and can't see out of one eye in this life it must be because I lost them in the last one. And that means, that means she's blind all over again because of, of me. I did it to her twice, John, fucking twice."

"Sssshhhh, Vriska, this time isn't your fault, okay? The blame's on however this crappy reincarnation thing works, or on whatever set it up if there's something out there responsible for it." You're about to argue with him but he twists around and uses his free arm to run his palm down your cheek a few times, and it doesn't stop you from crying but it's still comforting and it feels really good and it keeps you from trying to change his opinion.

A lot of time goes by before you're done. It still feels weird and embarrassing admitting to yourself that crying is a thing you actually do, but after the day you merged it's just seemed pointless to bother denying it. Maybe that's pathetic but guess what, it turns out you're a pretty fucking pathetic person, so who gives a shit?

"It's getting late," you finally say. "You should probably go home while you can still get some sleep. S-sorry you had to come over just to deal with me breaking down over this shit." He squeezes you a little tighter, then lets up.

"Okay, but you said some stuff that really freaked me out. Promise me you're not gonna kill yourself and I'll call my dad to come pick me up."

"... I promise," you say, hating yourself for it for some reason. "I promise I won't."

"Promise you won't what?"

"I promise I won't kill myself, god, chill out."

"Sorry. You're kind of tricky sometimes. I just don't want anything bad to happen. I don't want to, you know." He looks down awkwardly. "I don't want to lose you."

"Is it okay that I'm making your dad drive all over the place at night?"

"Yeah, it's not a big deal. He knows when something's really important. Like I said before, he's a really good dad apart from all the pastries." You spend the time waiting for his dad to show up mostly just kind of sitting together. Neither of you has a lot left to say. Eventually you hear a car parking outside and a muffled voice from John's pocket saying 'Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box?'

"That'd be him texting me. Vriska, it's obviously your choice to make and I'm not really in a great position to give advice, but I think if you can handle it, maybe talking to her more would be good for you. Just take care of yourself, alright? I'll always be around if something bad happens. I mean, with her, but also with anything, you know?"

"Yeah. You too." He looks surprised for some reason. "What? I'm your fucking moirail. Just call me if you ever need something. Anything." He smiles kind of bashfully and you roll your eyes to draw attention away from the fact that you're blushing. When he gets up and starts toward your door, you get up too.

"Wait, I'll walk you out." You move in front of him, twist the lock on the knob, and pause. "I'm not risking you being alone with my mom for even one second. Don't talk to her, okay? Even if she says something, just ignore it. Please. Trust me."

Downstairs you don't see her but you keep your eyes fixed on the front door anyway as he nervously follows. Once he's gone you turn around to head back to your room. Your mom is standing in front of the stairs.

"I think it's time we had a little talk," she says, a dangerous glint in her eyes, and her deliberately moving gaze leads yours to the table and chairs in the foyer. "Why don't you sit down." Instead, you walk up to her and stand about a foot away. For the first time in a while it strikes you that you're taller than her, not by a lot, but a few inches at least.

"You're right, it is time we had a little talk," you say. "About how it's time for you to get the fuck out of my personal life and stay out." When the thin, angry line of her lips parts to say something, you raise your arm, set it on her shoulder, and squeeze. Hard. "You think you can treat me like a goddamned kid? You've got no right to tell me what to do. I don't know when or why you quit having a heart but I'm fucking sick of it, just like I'm fucking sick of convincing myself you really love me any more just because you did when I was a kid. Do you think I just forgave and forgot all the shit you put me through? All the times you locked me in my room for weeks when I did something you didn't like and only let me out to go to school? The way the few times I ever tried to have friends, you'd get all disapproving and creepy and openly threatening and drive them away on purpose? When I woke up in a puddle of my own vomit after ODing on sleeping pills and instead of taking me to the hospital or doing anything even slightly fucking responsible you just said 'if you want to see your father so badly then do it right next time'? I used to be scared of disappointing you. I used to be scared of you in general. Guess what? I'm not afraid of you any more. Somebody like you doesn't deserve to be called a mother and doesn't have the right to act like one." After staring at you through all of this, wide-eyed, she yanks on your arm and pulls out of your grasp.

"I don't know who you are any more, but you're not the daughter I gave birth to," she says, and the last time she said that to you it hurt so much you cried in your room for hours, but now you just laugh in her face.

"Only got it half-right," you say, "and you're gonna need a lot stronger venom than that to make me feel bad about myself the way you always have. Now GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY BEFORE I MAKE YOU!!!!!!!!" She stumbles backward as you scream, and then stalks away to her own bedroom and pulls the door shut hard behind her. Adrenaline is pumping through your bloodstream and your throat aches.

When you get back into your room and lock the door behind you again you head over to shut that fucking window, but it turns out it's already closed and latched. Mom must have invaded your privacy while you were walking John out and done it for some reason. Kind of a small amount of time to do something like that, but it'd explain why she was at the bottom of the stairs, you guess. One more thing to remember later on if you ever doubt yourself for hating her. You hesitate for a few seconds, then sit down at your desk and begin to type.

 

enter handle: arachnidsGrip  
enter password: *******  
login successful!

 

arachnidsGrip [ AG ] has begun pestering gallowsCalibrator [ GC ]

 

AG: I have to go to sleep after this 8ecause I have school in the morning, 8ut I wanted to answer your question first.

GC: OOOH MYST3RY G1RL R3TURNS 4G41N 4ND SOON3R TH4N 1 3XP3CT3D

GC: GO FOR 1T

AG: I've done a lot of things I regret. Sometimes it feels like I regret 8asically everything.

AG: If I could change just one thing, though, and nothing else........

AG: It's selfish, 8ecause there are other people I hurt just as much, and people I hurt a whoooooooole lot worse for even dum8er reasons, 8ut I can't help feeling the way I do.

AG: I hurt some8ody really 8ad, a long, long time ago. She was my 8est friend. More like my sister, honestly. And I did something really terri8le to her and I still h8 myself for it even though at the time, I thought she deserved it.

AG: That's what I'd change. 8ecause she was always there for me, she's still paying for what I did even after all this time, and she deserved so much 8etter.

GC: WOW TH4TS PR3TTY H34VY STUFF 1 W4S 3XP3CT1NG SOM3TH1NG W4Y L3SS H34RTF3LT 4ND D3PR3SS1NG

GC: BUT 1F YOU R34LLY R3GR3T 4LL OF TH1S B4D STUFF YOU S4Y YOU D1D 4ND YOUD CH4NG3 1T 1F YOU COULD TH3N 1 TH1NK TH4T M34NS YOUV3 GROWN UP

GC: TH4TS SOM3TH1NG 4 LOT OF P3OPL3 N3V3R DO 4ND YOU C4NT CH4NG3 TH3 P4ST SO 1NST34D OF H4T1NG YOURS3LF M4YB3 YOU SHOULD T4K3 THOS3 R3GR3TS 4ND M4K3 UP FOR WH4T3V3R YOU D1D BY B31NG 4 B3TT3R P3RSON 1N TH3 FUTUR3

GC: 4ND 1F YOU 4ND YOUR FR13ND W3R3 TH4T CLOS3 SH3D PROB4BLY FORG1V3 YOU 4NYW4Y 1F SH3 H4SNT 4LR34DY

AG: Wow. That's kind of a lot to process, and I don't know if the last part is very realistic in this case. It'd 8e a whole lot to forgive. 8ut........ thanks. May8e you have a point. You'd know, you always were the smart one.

GC: W41T WH4T DO3S TH4T M34N WHO 4R3 YOU R34LLY

AG: Talk to you tomorrow, Terezi.

AG: Have a good night.

GC: S4M3 TO YOU MYST3RY G1RL

 

arachnidsGrip [ AG ] has ceased pestering gallowsCalibrator [ GC ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't mean for this chapter to take so long! It basically only took a day to write, like most of them, but I've been doing other stuff and dealing with all sorts of crap. What is this, though?! I wrote another thing that didn't end in misery? Somebody wake me from this strange dream.
> 
> Also, holy fucking shit did I ever have to spend like an hour and a half fixing weird HTML shit and random problems popping up in random places and things I had definitely put in disappearing for no reason. Fuuuuuuuuck.


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